


The Deadfalls

by TriDom



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Animal Death (Prey Animal), Hunter!Chris, M/M, Magical Realism, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Open Relationship, Polyamory Negotiations, Pre-Stetopher, Xenophilia, hunter!Peter, no infidelity, reverse verse, werewolf!Chris
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2018-12-10 22:59:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 38,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11701653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriDom/pseuds/TriDom
Summary: There is a small magic shop buried within the foothills of the Deadfall Mountain Range. It's run by a man half Peter's age and he can hardly resist the allure.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pibroch (littleblackdog)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleblackdog/gifts).



> Small note: Chris and Peter are technical adopted brothers. They've never considered each other brothers, but they were raised in the same house from the time Chris was 10 years old.

The foothills of the Deadfalls used to be Peter’s home. It could be argued that it had never stopped being his home in the way that even when he had houses in other cities, the mountainous region at the northern edge of the country had always been where he thought of going when he could finally rest. 

For the last fifteen years, he had been away from it while he and Chris created a name for themselves within the hunting community that didn't rely on his own family's bloodline. Now, they didn't have to keep their noses to the ground looking for work. It came to them. 

For the last six months, they had been looking for the right piece of property with the right house or a house near enough to what they wanted that they could make it their own. They settled for less than they wanted, but it was next to their parents’ property, meaning that his and Chris’s two-hundred acres neighbored their eight-hundred acres of foothills. 

During the full moon, Chris would be able to run for hours without ever touching territory that he couldn’t consider his own. 

It made the fact that the house had laminate counters, old shower and tub combinations, rotten front and back porches, and fifteen small segmented rooms acceptable. That could all be changed, but the opportunity for Chris to have such a large safe range in their home region would only happen a handful of times in their life. 

On the first full moon in their new house, Peter sat on the safer half of their back deck with his mom, his sister, and her youngest son. 

In the shadow of the trees, at the edge of the knee high grass, Peter saw a flash of Chris’s dark fur in the blue glow of their security light. His nose was to the ground of his new territory before he disappeared again. 

“He looks happy,” Peter’s mom said. 

“I’m sure he is,” Peter said. 

Next to them, Talia and Derek were talking about ants in Derek’s house. Apparently it was an infestation and not the first one. If he was the same man that kept poptarts in his night stand as a boy, open and half eaten, then he didn’t understand why Talia was so shocked. 

Peter listened to them talk for awhile before he went down the steps to the yard. The grass was nearly to his knees. He was going to have to call someone to brushhog it before it could be mowed. Then maybe they could plant a garden. They hadn’t had one in five years and that had only been rooftop boxes on their apartment terrace. 

He was only halfway to the forest when a tangle of bodarks in front of him snapped and moved. Then Chris looped out. His shoulders were thicker and wider than a natural wolf, making his head rest slightly lower than it should. At four hundred pounds, few wolves in existence were as large as he was, but those that were lived in the foothills of the mountains that surrounded them.

Peter crouched and held Chris’s massive head in his hands. “‘Do you like it?”

Chris panted in his face. His breath smelled of creek water. It still dripped from his muzzle

“Don’t run too far.”

Peter dug his fingers into his fur and Chris licked his face before pulling away and going back into the trees. Peter could see the small beeping green light on Chris’s collar for a few seconds after his fur had blended into the trees.

Peter looked up and in the dark, the peaks of the mountains loomed black above their yard against the moonlight.

  
  
  


There was overhead and inconvenience to hunting that Peter didn’t learn to appreciate and loath until he was an adult. As a child, all he had known was that his parents, his uncles, aunts, and most of their ken threaded out the malicious of the supernatural. 

  
He hadn’t seen the side of them searching for two months prior to a werewolf hunt for the correct strain of wolf’s bane or researching which relic would have the most effectiveness on different covens of witches. They had downplayed those things until the incoming generations were far too deep into the culture to want to quit. 

Peter had been looking for one ingredient to a bane for over a month. He had looked in bigger cities, called contacts in different regions and countries, and still he only had a handful of leads for shops that might have what he needed. 

But one additional benefit to moving back to the Deadfalls was a small shop kept at the edge of the Stilinski Pack reserve. Since the pack leader’s wife had passed, it had traded ownership, but through the years Peter had cultivated a relationship with the druid that operated it. 

The day after the full moon, Peter took Chris’s SUV down the long decaying asphalt road. He was glad he had when the paved surface ran out and it turned to large chunked gravel and thick mud. The path narrowed farther and farther until pieces of undergrowth squealed down SUV’s sides and clacked against the windows. 

When he started to think of reversing back down the long trail, that maybe the shop had closed, the road widened slightly. It dead-ended less than a thousand feet in front of him into a wall of pines. To the right was the driveway to the Stilinski house that he couldn’t see from the road. 

On the left was the wooden-sided building Peter remembered. Moss and water stains grew up the side in dark swaths. The lantern hanging from the small front porch was still lit. It’s flame flickered behind the aged panes as the lantern swayed on its hook. Peter pulled as far to the side of the road as he could and got out of the truck. The sound of the door closing rang flat from old growth. 

The dirt and gravel on the road crunched under his feet before he stepped on the grass and walked up the stone path, slick with moss and dew. The wooden steps creaked under his weight before he pushed open the front door. A bell rang, but when he looked up there was no bell. There weren’t any visible sensors around the door frame either. He was still looking for one, when someone dropped something on a table. 

“Can I help you?” 

He turned to the cash register and the young man behind it. His hands were on tomes thicker than he was. 

“I’m looking for Deaton.” 

“He doesn’t work here anymore.” 

“Does he have a number I can contact him at?” 

“If he wanted you to have it, you’d probably have it,” the kid said. “But if you’ll stoop to letting me to help you, I can probably live up to it.” 

“I need to ask him about an ingredient for a hunt. It’s important.” 

“Yeah the tattoos kind of gave you away,” he said, looking down at his arms. “What are those?” 

“And you think you can help me?” 

“I was trying to decide if they were sixth century North Sea runes or Ardenic, but now I see they’re a combination of both, which means that you’ve got North Sea lines, but have Ardenic influence from somewhere, probably a spouse.” 

Peter looked down at his arms. Areas of his tattoos had faded to dark gray, others were fresh and dark, others were scarred into his skin, leaving light white marks in his flesh.

“That’s very good.” 

“Your praise means everything.” 

Peter smiled slightly. “How would the owner feel if he knew you were talking to their customers this way?” 

“Yeah I don’t think he gives a fuck. It’s my shop,” he said. “So if it’s all the same to you, if you could spit out what you need that’d be great or you could just leave.” 

“You’re bad with people.” 

“You’re worse.” 

Peter smiled wider as he came farther into the shop. Books lined the wall behind the cash register, floor to ceiling. Two brass cages sat on the large counter at either end. One of them had small trees in it, like the hardwoods that littered his property, but they were no larger than his index finger. 

“I need the blood of an innocent hanged man,” Peter said. “Could you help me with that?” 

“It depends, what are you willing to pay for it?” he asked. He sat in his tall chair behind the counter like it was a throne. Sometimes, he wished he had Chris sense of what was before him wearing human skin. Most times, it was so much more fun to guess. 

“What would you like?” 

“That’s a terrible way to deal with the supernatural.” 

“I asked what you wanted, I never said I’d give it to you.” 

“How much do you need?” 

“A liter.” 

He sat forward on his chair, putting his elbows on the desktop. If Peter remembered correctly, it was made of one of the nemeton when it started to rot internally. 

“You think I just keep a liter of an innocent man’s blood in my shop?” 

“No, but I thought it was worth a shot before I went to a bigger shop not run by a child.” 

His eyes changed as Peter watched. They went from a rich brown to a color so light it was like dust, nearly white, but tinged yellow. Even when they faded, they had shifted to green. The clerk smiled larger, small lines forming around his eyes. 

“You’d think a hunter would know better than to insult people they don’t know.” 

“I’ve made it this long.” 

“I’m not sure how.” 

“By skills alone.” 

“I really doubt that.” 

“I’d be insulted if you could legally drink alcohol,” Peter said. 

The kid snorted before getting up from his chair and stepping through a door behind the desk. Peter heard him moving some things around and looked at the cage nearest him. This close he could see sycamore and oak trees mixed together. The grass on the shallow hills was waving, catching light that wasn’t there, coloring it white and vibrant green on either side of a narrow creek. Shadows of birds fell on the ground, but there were no birds in the cage. 

Then the kid was back. He said something into the cage in a dialect Peter didn’t know. 

One of the largest hills in the cage moved and shifted until a dragon lifted its head. Its hide was made of grass and mushrooms. It looked at the shop owner with small white eyes. He said something else to it then held his fingers to the bars, releasing something that Peter didn’t realize he had. The beetle flew from his fingers and started to climb higher in the cage. The dragon moved faster than Peter would’ve thought possible, standing on its back legs and snapping it from the air. 

The clerk said something else that was clearly praise. The dragon hardly looked at him before turning in a circle and laying down again, now with its back facing Peter, changing the landscape and still, after a moment, Peter would have difficulty pinpointing where it laid. 

“Incredible,” Peter said, still looking at the craftsmanship of the habitat. “Did you make it?” 

“Yeah.” 

Peter bent to look closer. He could hear the water of the stream. He could hear the dragon breathing. “Do you only keep dragons?” 

“They’re some of the most popular, so I have quite a few,” he said. “People just don’t realize how long they live.” 

“Do you keep others?” Peter asked. Chris had one dragon when they were younger, but he never talked about wanting another. He wanted something with fur, something warm. Something supernatural that wouldn’t piss itself at his presence. 

The clerk nodded. “I have enclosures behind the shop if you want to see.” 

“Do you sell them?” 

“I find them homes,” he said. 

“My husband has wanted one for a long time.” 

“What’s he looking for?” 

“A cerberus.” 

“I have one. Do you want to see it?” 

Peter tapped his fingers on the desk before nodding. Chris was only interested in a handful of cerberus breeds and if the companion wasn’t one then there was no point in even mentioning it to him, because he would convince himself to come down and look, then they would come home with a breed of cerberus that Chris didn’t actually want. While it wouldn’t be the end of the world, he didn’t want Chris to start the next chapter of their lives with any sacrifice. Even something so small as this. 

“I have nowhere to be.” 

The clerk rolled his eyes before walking from behind his desk and farther into the shop. Peter followed him around the corner, passing by shelves lined with merchandize only lit with lanterns and candles before the boy pushed open a door and hazy sunlight streamed in. 

Peter breathed in the air thick with fog and the scent of pine. Just outside of the door was a walkway of aged wood on stilts. Beneath it was a marsh, dark brown water interlaced with saw grass and cattails. Ahead of them, the walkway split three ways to three large greenhouses that loomed against the wall of forest behind. 

He followed the clerk down the path to the right. When he pulled open the door, Peter stepped in after him then froze. There were trees. Hundreds of them. The tops were hundreds of feet above them and bare. The greenhouse top hadn’t been that tall, not by a quarter. The sky was darker than Peter thought it was outside. It wasn’t foggy, but it was cold. He could see his breath. Dead leaves crackled beneath feet as he turned taking in the world in front of him. 

The clerk was farther inside, moving a piece of hollowed log. He looked inside of it then dropped it. There were birds calling. They sounded like ravens. 

“What is this?” Peter asked. 

The clerk looked up, wiping his hands on his jeans. “This?” he asked, looking around. “It’s an enclosure.” 

“You made this?” 

“Yeah.” 

“It’s amazing.” 

“Thanks,” he said, looking between the trees. “Fuck it,” he said before cupping his hand around his mouth. “Corio!” 

His voice echoed, so much farther than it should for the building Peter had seen from the outside. 

“If anything else comes out just have some backbone. They’re not dangerous for the most part.” 

“That’s the most comforting thing I’ve heard all day.” 

“And you call yourself a hunter.”  

Then a tangle of thorns to their left rustled and a medium sized dog came from the shadows. It was one of the breeds Chris wanted. Peter could see it immediately in the square shape of its three-heads. At first, its tail wagged then one of its sets of eyes locked on Peter and it huffed before it started to bark. 

“Yeah? Come here,” the clerk said to the cerberus. “Come here. Tell him about it.” 

It started to growl and Peter felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. The clerk went closer and scooped the dog up. It was too large to be carried like a baby, but the clerk obviously didn’t care. When he got near Peter, he crouched and put the cerberus on the ground, holding him by the collar on its center neck. 

“This is Coriolanus. He’s six months old. He’ll gain thirty-four more pounds by the time he’s two. He’s a traditional breed and he was born here when I got his mom. She’s been placed, his brother and sisters, so he’s the only one left. He doesn’t need to go to a house with kids or with smaller companions.” 

The clerk said it like he was reading a script before he started to pet the cerberus’s blue-gray fur striped with black and white. 

Peter crouched like the clerk. The cerberus’s ears were uncropped like the old region instead of those to the south. They were perfect upside down triangles against its square head. 

Peter reached out to let him sniff and the bites came from three directions at once. The clerk yanked it back immediately as Peter pulled away. It started to ache as soon as it started to bleed like every dog bite he had ever had. 

“Fuck.” 

“Yeah he’s temperamental,” the clerk said. 

Then the ache stopped. There was a faint itch in his fingertips then all that was left was the fresh blood on his skin. The right head of the cerberus reached out and Peter made himself not pull away when it opened its mouth. He relaxed when it just started to lick. When it started, the other two heads followed. 

“At least he apologizes,” Peter said. 

“He’s a gentleman.” 

“A gentleman wouldn’t bite in the first place.” 

“Not any I’d want to know,” the clerk said. When he looked up, he winked at Peter before petting the cerberus some more. “Think your husband would be interested?” 

“He would love him.” 

The clerk laughed. “You don’t have to look so disappointed.” 

“All of his affection will be alienated,” Peter said, scratching beneath one of the cerberus’s chins. Two sets of its eyes were pale gray. The set in the center was dark yellow. 

“He kind of deserves it. He’s perfect,” the clerk said. “Bring your husband by. I have to see them together before I can sign off, but he likes you, so that’s a good start.” 

“He bit me.” 

“And you’re still petting him.” 

Peter made a noncommittal noise as he pulled his hand away. He smiled when the cerberus followed his hand and sniffed at it, two of his heads licking him. His tail wagged. At six months, he was still a pup. He acted like one. The initial suspicion, then the sweetness. Chris was going to see him, want him, and never let him go. 

“What’s your husband’s name?” 

“Chris.” 

“Bring Chris by soon. I know I won’t have him for much longer.” 

“I wouldn’t think so,” Peter said, petting the cerberus behind its ears one more time before standing up. 

The clerk took one of the cerberus’s heads and kissed it between the eyes, then he did it to the other two. Then he had rawhides in his hand and Peter didn’t know where he had gotten them. 

They were hard enough that the cerberus laid down and started to chew and tug. Peter followed the clerk from the greenhouse, looking over his shoulder one more time at a world encased in plastic. 

“What are you?” Peter asked, still looking at the impossible height of the trees. 

“Yeah I don’t just hand that out freely,” the clerk said. “Come on before you let something out.” 

Peter stepped out of his way and let the clerk lock the door, then he followed him back up the walkway. The goosebumps that had risen in the greenhouse smoothed in the warm humid air of the foothills. 

“What’s in the other greenhouses?” 

“Other environments,” the clerk said. “The on the left is desert. The one in the middle is snowy.” 

“That’s amazing.” 

“Thanks,” the clerk said as they went back down the walkway and into the shop. 

The scent of burning wood filled Peter’s nose as the clerk closed the back door behind them. Peter’s eyes pulsed with dark spots in the sudden shift of light before they adjusted to the flickering candle light. It wavered on glass jars holding organs, plants, and small animals in serum. Peter followed the clerk back to the register slowly while he looked at his wares. When they were back at the counter inside of the shop, the clerk tapped his fingers on the lid of the glass jar of blood. 

“What’s the price?” he asked. 

“What’s your name?” 

“Is that the payment?” 

“No.” 

“Then what’s your name?” 

“Stiles,” he said. 

“Peter,” he said. 

“Hale?” 

“Hale,” Peter confirmed. 

Stiles looked at him a few moments longer before he shrugged and sat back. “$250.” 

“After all of that, all you want is money?” 

“I’ve got bills, Peter,” Stiles said, taking Peter’s card when he offered it and ran it through a reader on his cell phone. Then he laid it on the counter for Peter to sign. It was so at odds with the centuries old engraving on the desk it was jarring. “Agoir?” 

“Hm?” 

“That’s what you’re hunting?” 

“Yes. He’s decided to hold court in a justice's family cemetery.” 

“Then maybe they’re not as just as they think they are,” Stiles said, his chin resting on his hand. 

“Yes, funny how everyone knows that and no one says it,” Peter said, taking the glass jar of blood. “Thank you.” 

“Sure. Bring Chris in soon. I have a feeling they’ll get along. I’d love to get the little guy placed. He’s too good for half the shit that’s in that enclosure.” 

“I will.” 

“Happy hunting,” he said. 

“Thank you,” Peter said, taking the jar and nodding to Stiles before going towards the door. He paused before he reached the door handle. “What are you?” 

“You’re a really bad hunter,” Stiles said. 

“I’ll find out.” 

“Probably. It’s the worst kept secret in the region.” 

Then he had a book in his hands. Peter couldn’t remember him picking one up, but he also couldn’t imagine Stiles without one. 

“Bye, Peter.” 

Peter watched him for a moment before pulling the door open and stepping onto the small porch. The wood creaked beneath his feet and the warmth of the outside struck him again, although he heavily doubted that the small shop had central heat and air. Peter stared at the foggy outline of the trees before he walked down the steps to the SUV. 

  
  
  


 

 

Peter could hear the pounding of a hammer before he even opened the front door of his and Chris’s house. He followed the noise up the threadbare carpet on the stairs and into the master bedroom. The pounding got louder and louder as he walked to the bathroom doorway. Tile and dust coated the ground and tub, making the air hazy. 

Chris stopped and stretched before dropping the hammer into the bathtub and looking at him without Peter having to say a word. 

“Where did you go?” Chris asked.

“To see if I could find this,” Peter said, holding up the jar. 

Chris squinted before he raised his brows. “Where?” 

“The Haven.” 

“Deaton?” 

“No. Someone else is running it. A young man.” 

“Claudia’s son?” 

Peter opened his mouth then paused. “What was his name?” 

“Something native to her group, but they called him something else,” Chris said, wiping his forehead and leaving a streak of dust. “He would be what? Twenty? Twenty-five?” 

Peter stared at Chris and froze, replaying the conversations he’d had. Chris’s shoulders stooped. 

“How rude were you?” 

“By the end of our conversation? Not at all.” 

“Yeah? What about in the beginning?” 

“I didn’t know who he was, Chris.” 

“It wouldn’t kill you to be polite without having to know someone’s pedigree.” 

“I’m a snob. I don’t know what more you want from me.” 

Chris rolled his eyes and pulled his paper mask back up, picking up his hammer again. “Why don’t you go get a trash bag?” 

“He has a cerberus,” Peter said. 

“For sale?” 

“Adoption. He’s six months old and one of the old breeds.” 

“What color?” 

“Blue brindle.” 

Excitement flickered over Chris’s features before he looked back at the mess in the room. 

“If he’s still got it when we get back from out west then we’ll go look at it,” Chris said. 

“Or we could go look tonight and if you do want him then he could stay with Mom while we’re gone.” 

“It’s hard to find a good fit for me anyway. We’ll just deal with it when I get back,” Chris said, using the clawed side of the hammer and starting to tear at the tile again. 

“Chris, you can come with me to go look at it or I’m just going to go back down and get it. He’s already placed the mom and the rest of the pups. It’s exactly the kind of mutt you’d love.” 

Chris rolled his eyes again behind his safety glasses before he kept pulling tile. Peter left the room and went back down the stairs to get a few trash bags and the industrial broom from the garage. He went back up and started clearing the rubble. 

It wouldn’t be a bad bathroom when they finished with it, but at the moment it looked like a nightmare. The mirror, sink fixtures, light fixtures, and toilet were all covered in thick white powder. It was still an improvement over their faux gold coating. 

Peter pulled on the second mask to keep from breathing in the life of the eighty year old woman who had lived there before. She seemed sweet when they closed on the house, but she was still a stranger and the thought of breathing in her toilet activities from the last forty years was almost enough to make him bolt. If Chris wasn’t so territorial he would’ve called in a demo crew. As it stood it was going to be a big enough shit fest to get people in to make everything pretty again. Watching people destroy his home, no matter how new, would be enough to lite Chris’s already short fuse. 

When they finished, they went to the second bathroom on the top floor and showered together. They washed the majority of dust from each other, Peter rubbing his his thumbs over the shells of Chris’s ears while Chris dragged his hands down Peter’s throat and through his hair before Peter had Chris turn around. He soaped a rag and dragged it down the line of dark fine hair on his spine. Chris growled quietly bracing his arm on the shower wall while Peter worked over his back. 

“The shop owner has three greenhouses behind The Haven,” Peter said over the spray of the water. 

“Hm?” 

“They have completely separate ecosystems. I only saw inside of one of them, but it was incredible. The trees were taller than the building.” 

“We knew Claudia was powerful.” 

“She did perform miracles,” Peter said, dragging his nails lightly over the fat flat scars mixed with Chris’s tattoos like parasites where a Deadfall wolf had pulled out Chris’s tender insides when he was only ten. “How much are you going to fight me on just going to see this pup that has your name all over him?” 

“We’ll go see if he’s still open. If he isn’t, I don’t want to hear anything else about it until we’re back from the hunt.” 

“Sold,” Peter said. “Stop hogging the water,” he said bumping Chris out of the way to wash his own hair. Soon Chris’s fingers replaced his and he sank into the scratch of his nails over his scalp in a shower that was a quarter the size of their old one. Somehow remembering what was beyond their walls helped lessen the claustrophobia. 

 

***

The sun was a red band above the trees when Chris stepped out of his SUV onto the narrow dirt road. If he remember correctly, the small road farther up and to the left led to John Stilinski’s house and the home of the Stilinski pack, the largest werewolf pack in the eastern region of the range. 

Peter was already walking up the steps to the small old shop when Chris reached the ditch. Peter twisted the doorknob then his face fell before he knocked. 

“I’m sure he’s closed,” Chris said as a dull hollow spread through his chest. It wasn’t the end of the world. When they got back from the hunt, he would come back and get the pup if it liked him, which was a large if. 

“The light is still burning,” Peter said. 

“Maybe it’s always burning,” Chris said. 

“Yeah it is, ‘cause I’m always open.” 

Chris jumped hard as he turned. People didn’t sneak up on him. He heard them from yards away, but he still turned to a man between twenty and twenty-five. He smiled at Chris and held out his hand. 

“Chris?” 

“Yes,” he said. “Stiles?” 

“Yep. Nice to meet you,” he said, then he looked at Peter. “I guess you brought him to see Corio?” 

“What a remarkable mind reader,” Peter said. 

“Peter,” Chris warned.

“He’s fine. I’ve dealt with bigger assholes than him. They all learn to shut the fuck up sooner or later,” Stiles said, climbing the porch steps and stepping around Peter to open the door. He didn’t use a key, but it opened under his hand all the same. 

Chris followed Peter and Stiles into the shop and smelled the closed up air of it. All magic shops had the same scent of old books, dust, and faint mothballs, even when some tried to cover it up with incense or air fresheners, it could still be smelled beneath it all. 

“Have you ever had a companion?” Stiles asked. 

“Yes,” Chris said, looking at the two large copper cages on the counter with a register on it. He could remember coming in with his and Peter’s mom and seeing Claudia Stilinski behind it. He saw movement in one of them, but it was so dark that even his eyes couldn’t make it out. He wanted to stick his muzzle against it. 

Then another door opened and twilight filtered into the shop. Peter followed Stiles through it and Chris followed until he saw the three greenhouses. They stood in front of the forest like ghosts. He could see the shadow of the trees through the transparent sheeting. He looked down when he heard a grunt and saw an alligator duck beneath the dark water. 

“She’s harmless,” Stiles said. 

“Don’t touch it,” Peter said. 

“Well why would you touch it?” Stiles asked, like Peter might be the stupidest person in the world. 

“He’s a curious man, Stiles,” Peter said. 

“Not that curious,” Chris said. It was a lie, but he was old enough to know better than to touch everything that caught his eye. 

“Anymore,” Peter said. 

He growled when he was standing just behind Peter. He didn’t really notice he had until Stiles looked back at him. Peter reached back and touched Chris’s cheek. 

“He’s harmless.” 

“Yeah I doubt that,” Stiles said, but he smiled. As soon as he turned his back, the pressure of the parasite in Chris’s head at some intensity or another sniffed the air. 

Then Stiles pushed open the door of the greenhouse he had led them to. Outside, there were loons starting to call. As soon as he stepped into the greenhouse it was nearly silent. He could hear their feet on the dead leaves. The air was less humid, cool, crisp air. There was sky thousands of feet above where the roof of the building should be. The clouds even moved. They looked like they could drop snow. 

Small tingles prickled his arms and the nape of his neck like the lightest of touches only making the finest hairs his rise. 

“Wow,” he finally said. 

“Thanks,” Stiles said. 

Chris looked at the boy, only a few years older than a child of his and Peter’s could have been. His eyes shifted to the richest yellow Chris had ever seen in someone else’s face. He’d seen it a thousand times in the reflections of bodies of water in so many regions, the intensity of his wolf’s eyes in the face of someone else. 

Then Stiles looked away and his eyes were dark again. 

“It’s getting dark so if anything comes out that isn’t him, don’t react,” Stiles said. 

Peter and Chris both nodded before Stiles cupped his hand around his mouth and called for the cerberus. Immediately ravens started to caw through the silent air. It sounded like hundreds of them. Deep into the trees, Chris saw movement between the thin trunks down the center of what should be a greenhouse but looked like never-ending woods. It was too faint to tell what it was, but there were multiple of them. The urge to chase tickled his spine. Something else moved in the tree tops and Chris felt the pressure in his brain spread beneath his skin. His teeth dropped and he didn’t fight. He was hyper aware of Peter beside him. 

Then a tree limb to their right quivered. Chris bumped Peter and Peter allowed it. It could be because he had left his pistol in the truck like they always did when visiting a friendly magic user or it could be because he knew the other half was only skin deep. The tips of his fingers started to go numb. 

A mountain lion crawled out on the limb, its stomach nearly touching the branch. Its ears were pinned flat to its skull. Its right eye was missing along with the curve of its socket. It bared its teeth and hissed. Chris could see into its nasal cavity. 

The growl that echoed from Chris’s chest was quiet, but carried. He could smell the decay of flesh on it. Its tail flicked where it hung from the limb. Moss crumbled from its fur at every movement, raining to the ground. Chris didn’t stop growling even when the large cat closed its mouth. He could hear Peter’s heartbeat behind him. He focused on that, the quiet steady rhythm of it. He watched for any twitch of the cat’s muscles. He could feel the parasite infesting his body curling along his bones.

Finally, the cat turned on its branch and disappeared back into the darkening tree tops. Chris waited until the leaves stopped moving before he relaxed and felt his shoulder brush Peter’s chest. 

“Nice. She normally doesn’t go away unless I squirt her with some rain,” Stiles said. “Also, total shit job of not reacting like I said.” 

“Sorry.” 

“No you aren’t,” Stiles said. Then he smiled at the trees where there was movement. “There’s my little guy.” 

A twig snapped then a gray cerberus ran from the underbrush. As soon as it saw him and Peter it paused. Two of its noses lifted, sniffing. The other was still pulling toward Stiles, already licking the air. 

“They’re fine,” Stiles said to the cerberus. “Come on. They won’t bite I promise.” 

The cerberus came closer, one slow step after the other. It let Stiles pet its back and when Peter crouched and offered his hand one of its heads licked him. Its center head didn’t leave Chris’s face. 

“Big guy you’re going to have to get on his level. The wolf blood is already making you scary as fuck to him,” Stiles said. 

Chris kneeled and held out his hand toward the pup. Its face was just starting to lose the puppy fat and thinning out to the adult shape it would become. Its center head sniffed him first and the other two followed. 

He waited for the teeth and was already repeating a mantra in his head to not react if it bit him. It was only a puppy. There was no threat. It was afraid. It wouldn’t be the first canine to attack him by a long shot. 

Then the center head licked. The other two did the same until it was allowing Chris to pet the soft fur behind one of its sets of ears. He petted one of the pale stripes on its blue-gray coat. 

“He didn’t even take to my dad that well,” Stiles said. 

“Do dogs normally like John?” Chris asked. 

“Yeah. It’s the breed of wolf you are that throws them off,” Stiles said, giving Chris another half-smile. “You’re feral is just right there under the surface. They can smell it.” 

“He doesn’t seem to mind,” Peter said. “I told you he had your name on him.” 

“He’s beautiful,” Chris said. 

“What kind of companion did you have before?” Stiles asked. 

“A white-throated wyvern.” 

“How long did you have her?” 

“Fifteen years. I got her when she was two-hundred.” 

“That’s a great life span.” 

“She was a good girl,” Chris said, cupping the cerberus’s center head in his hands. Its pale eyes looked back at his unflinching. 

“What kind of property did you all just buy?” Stiles asked. 

“There’s some field, woods, and a pond,” Peter answered. “But he would be inside most of the time.” 

“You guys travel a lot though, don’t you?” 

“Not as often as we used to,” Peter said. “We plan to be home more. When we aren’t home he’ll stay with our mom.” 

“I like your mom,” Stiles said, then he looked at Chris. “How ‘bout it?” 

Chris petted the cerberus for another moment before he nodded. “I want him.” 

“Awesome. Peter, can you go get a pen from my desk? The big black one and the paper in the top left drawer. I’d go, but I don’t want to leave you guys alone in here. That mountain kitty is one of the friendlier things.” 

Peter walked back out of the greenhouse. Then Stiles’s grabbed Chris’s arm and Chris barely kept from yanking his arm away. The tingles that had been on his skin when he came in the greenhouse shot down his spine and yanked his wolf up near the surface again. Then Stiles let him go. 

“Sorry. I just can’t send my guy with a werewolf without checking what kind of control you have.” 

Chris nodded and took a deep breath through his nose. “Do I pass?” 

“Yeah, flying colors,” Stiles said. “Not that I really expected any less. You and Peter kind of have a reputation.” 

“Don’t believe a word of it. Unless it’s about Peter, then the truth is probably worse anyway,” Chris said. 

Stiles laughed, sitting cross-legged on the ground. The cerberus went back to him, climbing into his lap although he was getting too big to do that. It still circled and laid down, two sets of its eyes closing while the other set stayed on Chris. 

“Is he dead?” Chris asked, looking at the cerberus. 

“No?” Stiles asked, petting his short fur. 

“Everything else in here is.” 

“The trees might just be bare.” 

Chris just stared and Stiles smiled again. This time it looked boyish though, like a kid caught telling secrets he knew he shouldn’t. 

“He’s just got a little bit of the breed affinity for dead things. It’s probably why he likes you.” 

“I didn’t die.” 

“You were close enough,” Stiles said. “It still follows you around like fog, like Death is still pissed off it didn’t get you. Now I don’t have to wonder why people talk about you guys like you’re terrifying.”

Then the greenhouse door came open with a creak and Peter was back. He sat on the ground like they were. Chris had enough time to wonder how he would sign the paper Peter brought before Stiles took the pen Peter bought him. He took off the cap with his teeth and there was a sharp fine point. 

“Okay, this is a contract. Basically it says if you can’t take care of Coriolanus anymore or you don’t want to, then you’ll bring him back to me. Not to another rescue, not to your aunt or your third cousin twice removed, he comes back to me. End of story,” Stiles said. The first paragraph of the white paper laying on the ground between them glowed. 

“Next, if he’s sick, you bring him to me. If you can’t take him to me, then call me and I’ll give you a reference for whatever you’re at in the country. You will not take him to just anyone.” 

As he spoke the second paragraph lit with dull gold behind the black letters in the twilight. 

“Then there is food. You’ll buy his food from me or buy him food with the same quality content from somewhere else. I’m not trying to make a monopoly, but he has certain needs that can only be met from someone making his food that knows what they fuck they’re doing,” Stiles said. 

“And last, if you abuse him, he has wards on him. I’ll know and I will literally make you wish you were never born,” Stiles said, looking up with a smile to Peter and Chris. “Got it?” 

“He has three mouths to bite with. Why would we abuse him?” Peter asked. 

“I understand,” Chris said, shouldering Peter. 

“Cool,” Stiles said, ignoring Peter too as he used the small pen knife to cut his finger open. He used his thumb like a stamp on each paragraph before holding out his other hand to Chris. Chris held out his forefinger. The slice was quick but deep. He pressed his bloody fingerpad near each of Stiles’s marks. 

“Ow,” Peter said. “You can’t tell me it needed to be that deep.” 

“Whoops,” Stiles said. 

Then Peter was pressing his finger print next to Chris’s on the paper. Then the paper caught fire in the circle they’d made on the ground. The cerberus jumped too, moving from Stiles’s lap to push against Chris’s side. Chris put his arm around him, feeling his smaller heart pattering as the paper burned to ash in front of them. 


	2. Chapter 2

Only a town built into rocks would believe that making a string of shops nestled against a dam was a good idea. It was this kind of idealistic mysticism that Peter missed. When it was built, his mother would call and mention that her clothes always got wet when she went to the small boutique that she loved with handcrafted silver jewelry from local mines. She never said it like a complaint, just a statement of fact. 

Late in the night, Peter found parking easily enough although the lot was narrow. When he opened his car door, the roar of Ibern River rang dully against the concrete as the overflow of rain ran through the opened flood gates. Far below the parking lot, at the bottom of a steep stone incline, people were sitting on the rocks with fishing poles and electric and gas lanterns. The static of multiple of their radios competed with the drone of water. 

Peter walked across the street behind him with the glow of the enchanted lanterns casting orange, purple, blue, and green flames on the damp pavement. He could smell coffee before he even stepped beneath the eave of the coffee shop with a wooden cup hanging from a chain above the door. 

A bell rang as he pushed open the door, but this one he saw, like Solstice bells left out far too long on their crimson ribbon. The rough hewn shelves along one side of the shop near the entry were lined with different blends and additives. He looked for one he would enjoy and Chris could stomach. In the end, it was easier to just take two. 

As a red-headed girl behind the counter rang up his order, he scanned the chalkboard menu above her head and ordered something against his better judgement. It was late in the evening, but he had nowhere to be in the morning aside from his bed. 

After he placed his order, he looked around the shop. There were string lights hanging from every surface that a string light could be hung, twinkling on the glass of the bakery case and the main light fixtures. It might have looked magical if he had never seen real magic. 

Like the the greenhouses behind The Haven. Later, Chris had told him about feeling the magic of the place trickling over his skin, like standing in the easement of high voltage powerlines. It was two weeks later and still his mind wandered back to the world of barren trees like it had time and again, when he was awake or asleep.

When he looked around the shop and saw the maker of his thoughts, he paused. For a moment, he thought he might be a figment, but he watched and Stiles didn’t move from where he sat in the corner with a book in his hands. He looked so much younger than Peter remembered, like his brain couldn’t reconcile his power and his youth. 

Stiles was drinking his coffee without looking up from his book. Peter moved between the few other patrons and looked at the gold leaf lettering on the green cloth cover. Then the words started to glow. Peter looked up and met Stiles’s eyes. 

“You were trying so hard to read it I figured I’d make it easier,” Stiles said. 

“Aren’t you thoughtful?” 

“I try,” Stiles closed the book, using his finger as the marker. “How’s Corio?” 

“He’s Chris’s shadow.” 

Stiles smiled. Peter hadn’t noticed before how many moles he had. For the first time, he thought of the term beauty mark and found it was fitting. Instead of some platitude parents told their children for a god being careless during their creation. 

“I thought they’d get along, but you never really know,” Stiles said. 

“Well Chris thinks he’s perfect and the pup seems to be of the same opinion.” 

“Little pup raises the moon for him, huh?” 

Peter laughed slightly at the werefolk saying. “I guess you could say that.” 

Stiles smiled, pushing his book to the side. “How’d the hunt go?” 

“It’s over, so fine.” 

“It went that well, huh?” 

“Peter,” the barista called. 

“If you don’t have anywhere to be I want to hear about it,” Stiles said. 

Peter nodded before he went up to get his latte then back to Stiles’s table. Stiles sniffed, an action he was so used to with Chris that he almost didn’t realize Stiles shouldn’t be doing it. 

“You’re not drinking a pumpkin latte.” 

“Yes, I am,” Peter said. 

Stiles smiled. “That’s not good for your hard ass vibe.” 

“What would be better for it? Only drinking black coffee and pretending not to enjoy sugar? That seems a bit like someone who’s too worried about what others think.” 

“True I guess,” Stiles said. “If you like that, they’ve got The Witches Brew. The Baranka sisters came up with it. Dark chocolate and pumpkin. It’s good.” 

“I’ll try it next time,” Peter said. 

“So the hunt?

“The blood of a hanged man only works when the Agoir is wrong.” 

“Yeah that’s the catch.” 

“The justice failed to tell us that he had just overseen the execution of a man with heavily contested evidence. No witnesses for the murder they claimed he’d committed. The case was handled sloppily. He had made enemies with the sheriff’s office handling the case. Then the Agoir appeared so his innocence isn’t contested anymore.” 

“I bet they shit their pants when that scary fucker showed up,” Stiles said. 

“They weren’t pleased,” Peter said. 

He remembered the way the justice’s daughter had screamed when she came to the cemetery with them the first night they were there and had seen the Agoir as he sat behind his otherworldly desk, glowing blue and seeping with fog against the high heat of the region with his nine eyes searching documents that disappeared when he finished with them. 

“Did the justice repeal the charge?” 

“Eventually. He was adamant that he wasn’t wrong. Even after Chris gave the Agoir the blood as a treaty, he wouldn’t take it. The justice still said it was wrong, like he actually believed he could convince us. Any Agoir would’ve been hard to disbelieve, but it was Calimain.” 

“Shit,” Stiles said, taking another drink of his coffee. 

“I’m surprised you know who he is.” 

Stiles laughed, it had an edge to it. “I’m young, not stupid. What’d he do? Start cursing livestock?” 

“The justice’s water supply for his home runs beneath the Domorian cemetery. He let the ground leach.” 

Stiles shuddered. 

“Mhm,” Peter said, drinking his latte. 

He could still smell the decomposition in the glass of water the maid had handed him when he and Chris arrived. When they were taken to the justice in his home office, he was drinking the same water. Chris kept Peter from saying a word as they spoke. By the end of their conversation, the judge had asked the maid for more even with sediment lingering in the bottom of his glass.

“Did you use the blood? You can return stuff if you don’t use it.” 

“No. I threw it in the justice’s face.” 

Stiles laughed. “Why?” 

“I was making a point and in the end he came to the same conclusion I had.” 

“Yeah I bet. It’s not like I store that shit at a decent temperature,” Stiles said with another full body shudder. “You know it was clotted.” 

“Oh it was.” 

“That’s fucking gross.” 

“When a cemetery is involved when is it ever not gross?” Peter asked. “I’m taking Agiors off our list.” 

“Yeah? I guess you get to do that when you’re Chris Argent and Peter Hale.” 

Peter smiled, “So you do know who we are.” 

“I knew who you were the second you stepped in my shop,” Stiles said. “Well I guess I knew you had to be the scary one or the smart ass one. Then you opened your mouth and that mystery was solved.” 

“Chris is quite the smart ass.” 

“Yeah, that’s who I meant,” Stiles said sarcastically. 

“Could you tell he was a werewolf?” 

Stiles smiled with half his mouth. “It's like he doesn’t even try to look like anything else, but why should he?” 

“Oh, how sweet,” Peter said. “Do you have a crush on my husband, Stiles?” 

“Why wouldn’t I?” 

“The eyes and teeth deter so many.” 

“Because people are stupid.” 

“Or maybe they value their lives.” 

“There’s a point of valuing it too much.” 

“You’re preaching to the converted.” 

Stiles laughed. “Yeah I guess. Where is he tonight anyway?” 

“He was destroying one of our bathrooms when I left.” 

Stiles raised his brow, taking a drink of his coffee. 

“We’re remodeling the house we bought.” 

“Yeah, the empty slot beside your parents? The place is a shit hole. The land is great, though.” 

“That’s called trespassing, Stiles.” 

“Your name can be on a deed all you want. Doesn’t mean anyone in this county can keep me from looking for shit on their land. Mushrooms grow where they grow. There’s actually a circle of wolf lichen behind the pond in the very rear corner of your plot that I have to go get every six months or so.” 

“So we can sell it to you.” 

Stiles snorted. “You can try.” 

Peter’s phone beeped in his pocket and he pulled it out, when he saw the time he expected it to be Chris, but it was only his battery warning him of its death. 

“Husband?” Stiles asked. 

“Yes,” Peter lied before he pushed himself to his feet. “I need to make sure I still have a home to go to.” 

“Yeah you should probably do that. Good talk though. When you come in for dog food or he does, I expect him to be bring my baby.” 

“I thought we signed paperwork making him ours?” 

“Again, just a piece of paper,” Stiles said. 

Peter laughed slightly before he turned to go. “Have a good night, Stiles.” 

“Yeah back at’cha,” Stiles said. 

Peter pushed through the front door of the coffee house and onto the sidewalk. Awnings stretched to either side outlined with twinkling lights. Most of the store fronts were dark, but the glow of the coffee house threw his shadow on the damp pavement in front of him, making him a giant in another world, until he reached his car. 

 

 

When Peter came into the house the light in the living room was on. The TV was on, but the room was empty. He walked through the lower floor of the house, enough wood paneling to build a small boat surrounding him. In the kitchen, he heard the plucking of guitar strings. He followed the sound to the screen door where Chris sat in one of the wood chairs on the porch, his ankle crossed over his leg and his acoustic in his hands. 

The late summer bugs fluttered in the porch light near him. A large spotted moth cast shadows on the floorboards. Coriolanus laid at Chris’s bare feet, two of his heads down and the other looking into the woods. 

Peter slid the screen on its rusted tracks. Eventually they would replace it with bifolding doors that would span the side of the house. For now it reminded him of his grandmother’s house. There were even snags in the black netting, like a cat had climbed it more than once. 

Chris moved his fingers over the fretboard of his guitar, his fingers strumming over the cords without a pick, His foot kept rhythm on the air with the buzzing of the insects and the nightbirds like his own chorus. He looked up at Peter and his eyes were yellow. 

Peter sat beside him and closed his own, listening to him play and his voice as he sang beneath his breath. Even mistakes sounded intentional as his fingers moved like art that was lost to memory as soon as the air released the vibration of each note. 

“I want to put up some bat boxes,” Chris said, his music not ceasing. 

“We should.” 

As a child, he remembered standing in the green glow of the security light in their backyard, throwing rocks in the air and the night alive with bats swooping to catch them without sight to guide them. He remembered standing in the same backyard with Laura and Derek only to his hip and showing him how to do the same. He remembered the way they screamed and giggled as the bats flew just above their heads. 

“How was your coffee?” Chris asked. 

“Good,” Peter said, petting Coriolanus as he stood up and came to him with a long stretch of his back legs and a tired groan. “I ran into Stiles. We talked for awhile.” 

“Did you?” 

“He asked about the hellhound,” Peter said, picking Coriolanus up and putting him on his lap. The pup went like a sack of potatoes in his arms, laying back with his dark belly exposed and his paws limp when Peter nudged them. 

“Did you tell him we left him in a dumpster?” 

Peter laughed slightly. “Yes. He’s out searching them all.” 

Chris smiled, playing something soft and ringing. The puppy watched him upside down, bent over Peter’s wrist. Peter couldn’t fault him. He started to sing something soft and nearly sweet. His chest still ached even when he couldn’t make out all the words in the way Chris mumbled. 

When he finished, he still plucked at the strings. Like he couldn’t stand to end the peace of the night. For a moment, Peter wondered how it would be if they didn’t go inside. If Chris sat and played through the dark. Peter breathed the scent of damp old wood and rough cut grass. He closed his eyes and felt if they did the sun would never rise. 

“I finished the bathroom and the kitchen,” Chris said. 

“Good,” Peter said. 

“You can call the construction company when you’re ready.” 

“Okay,” Peter said. “Play it again.” 

“What’s that?” Chris asked, even as he started to thump softly against the guitar’s hollow body in time. 

“Just do it.” 

“Bossy.” 

Peter hummed and sank deeper into the chair still warm with late summer heat. The dog was heavy against him, but he felt no urge to move him as Chris played beside them. 

They had had porches, balconies, terraces. The kind to make guests coo at the city skylines, views of the sea, open flat fields. They had always smiled and thanked them, and he had always felt like a fraud. 

“Do you remember when we were young, swing sets, the costumes, the dirt in the sun…” Chris started to sing loud enough for Peter to hear. 

Peter knew the words, but he didn’t join. He let Chris sing and held his breath for moments at a time like it was too loud. He would miss something. After twenty years he didn’t know what that would be, but the fear kept him and his lungs ached. 

 

 

It was still dark and hot when Peter woke up after going to sleep well past midnight. The air of their bedroom was still sticky and heavy as the old air conditioning unit fought to keep pace in the humidity. It took him a moment to realize Chris was awake against him. Then his teeth were on either side of his windpipe. His breath was hot and damp against his skin. His hands slid down Peter’s arms until he had his wrists. He pulled them above his head and against the mattress. 

Peter exhaled as blood rushed down his body, making his skin tingle. He could almost hear it. Chris started to grind against him. His pubic hair burned. He pushed against the friction. Moonlight came in their window, coloring Chris blue. His eyes were so pale in either state, but he didn’t have to see the color to know they were yellow. 

“Chris.” 

He felt the low soft growl as much as he heard it. 

Peter pressed up harder before a quiet noise escaped his between his teeth. 

Chris’s upper lip twitched. His fat elongated teeth made it look like he’d been hit.   
He closed his eyes and shook his head. 

“Don’t.” 

“I’m sorry,” Peter said quietly, pulling his wrists from Chris’s grip and sliding them up his shoulders. He could hear his hands like fine sandpaper against his skin. 

The full moon was getting close again. It seemed impossible that they had been home that long.

Peter didn’t have a drop of magic and he could still feel the way Chris vibrated. He was a radio frequency so few could understand and fewer could appreciate. Peter dragged his open mouth up Chris’s exposed throat breathing on his skin, marking him with air from his lungs. 

Chris ground against the hollow of his hip, their dicks sliding against each other before Chris took them both in his hand. Peter arched, making another noise that made Chris’s back stiffen. 

“Sorry,” Peter said with his eyes shut tightly and his chin tilted back. 

Chris fucked harder into his dry palm, smearing precum over Peter’s dick until they were both sticky with it. His growl was a drone. 

Peter pushed up until Chris kissed him, firm and dry. Peter kissed him back, closed-mouth again and again, dragging his fingers through Chris’s hair and down the back of his neck. 

His ass ached, not like he’d been fucked, but like he needed to be. He dug his nails into Chris’s shoulders as a sharp twist shot down his spine. Sometimes he needed him like water. He remembered the way Chris burned when he would slide into him, so sweet it didn’t even whisper of pain. 

Maybe that’s why he could only have him so rarely. 

It kept him hungry. 

It kept him hollow. 

“Chris,” he said again, his memories so sharp they barbed. If he asked Chris would give him what he wanted. Peter ran his hands up Chris’s back and felt the raised edges of his scars. 

Chris looked down at him, one hand slowly up both of their shafts. He touched Peter’s cheek with the other, brushing his thumb near his mouth. 

“It’s okay,” Peter said, dragging his hands down Chris’s neck and over his shoulders. “I’m just horny.” 

“I can’t right now,” Chris said. 

“It’s okay,” Peter said again. 

“I want to.” 

“I know,” Peter lied before he leaned up and kissed Chris again, dry, before Chris parted his lips and he whimpered, like a rabbit in a trap, something fragile that could be ripped apart. He was naked beneath Chris, he was prey if that’s the way Chris wanted it. “I’m sorry. Just make me cum. I can’t help it.” 

Then Chris’s mouth was hard and wet on his. Peter kissed him back, sliding his tongue over Chris’s tasting him, feeling him growl and not feeling like he needed to be afraid at all even as it got deeper and rougher. They only stopped kissing when Peter got close and he gritted his teeth. Chris started to kiss his throat, open, wet kisses with his teeth pressed into his skin while Peter came all over his own stomach and Chris’s hand. 

Chris jerked himself with Peter’s cum before he groaned and his body stuttered. Peter held him close as Chris moaned against his throat, his teeth digging deeper, but not breaking the skin before he released. 

For nearly a minute, Chris’s weight pressed Peter into their bed and he savored it, trying to memorize every inch of their skin touching then becoming so consumed by trying to remember that his brain seized on it. It was almost a relief when Chris finally moved. 

“I’m going to take a shower,” Chris said. 

“Okay,” Peter said, watching Chris leave their bedroom. 

He laid there longer, feeling their cum cooling on his stomach. The shower in the other bathroom came on and ran for five or ten minutes before Peter got up and went to their attached bathroom where only the sinks worked. He wetted a rag and wiped his skin. 

When he came out, Chris was already back in bed with his dark short hair still damp. Peter crawled in beside him and Chris held out his arms. 

Peter pressed his face against Chris’s neck. Chris ran his hands up his back and down his arms, just barely too fast to be calm. 

“Shh,” Peter whispered, dragging his fingers over Chris’s tattoos that mirrored his own. 

Chris growled. Not a threat, but maybe it could be defined by a warning or maybe it couldn’t be defined by words at all, but Peter knew that sound as well as he knew any others Chris could make. 

Peter pulled away until he could look Chris in his eyes. Anchoring tattoos wrapped over his chest, arms, back, and the base of his neck. 

“It’s so aggressive here,” Chris said. 

“I’m more afraid of Coriolanus than you.” 

“Because you’re self preservation is non-existent.” 

“Would you have it any other way?” 

Chris snorted before he moved down and tucked himself beneath Peter’s chin like Peter had done to him. Peter traced the scarifications on his shoulder, closing his eyes and feeling the slight raise of the lines against Chris’s hot skin. 

 

 

Three days later, Chris said Coriolanus needed dog food. Peter was out of the door with the SUV’s keys before he could say another word. The heat of low summer was an alive thing in the air as he drove with the windows down until the air conditioning began to cool the cabin. 

As he turned onto the narrow dirt road that led to The Haven, he braced for the squeal of the undergrowth against the sides of Chris’s SUV, but when he came to the narrowing, the limbs reached toward the body, but were just beyond the paint. As he pulled to the side of the road, his wheels in the grass, he saw Stiles outside, kneeling on the ground in front of the shop. 

“Hey,” Stiles said, looking up and dragging his wrist over his brow, leaving a trail of mud in the sweat. 

“Hello,” Peter said. “What are you doing?” 

“Planting some wolf’s bane. Don’t get any on you. Chris might kick you out of the house.” 

Peter made a wide path around Stiles until he stood upwind of him. Not that there was more than a whisper of a breeze to think of. The air felt bloated and full. The sky looked like it would dump rain. 

“Won’t that curb your clientele?” Peter asked, leaning on the porch railing and looking down at Stiles as he sprinkled seeds in the dark soil. 

“I don’t get many werewolves and most of them I do get are pack so I don’t really charge them,” Stiles said. “Dad’s got this one piece of shit in his pack that’s been hanging around during full moons. I’m hoping this will get the point across.” 

“Couldn’t you just curse him?” 

“Yeah don’t think I won’t and don’t think he’d be the first,” Stiles said. “I get so fucking sick of these wolves treating me like I’m a collectible. Oh Alpha’s son. I need him! Fuck off.” 

“They do realize you could smite them don’t they?” 

“Some of them are so fucking stupid that it turns them on.” 

“Maybe you should actually do some smiting. Curse someone with eternal fleas. It might drive your point home.” 

Stiles laughed slightly, looking up at him. “That’s racist.” 

“I can’t be racist. I’m married to a werewolf.” 

Stiles rolled his eyes.“What’d you need anyway?” 

“Dog food,” Peter said. 

“Funny, because I don’t see Corio and I remember explicitly telling you I wouldn’t give you food without him,” Stiles said. 

“So you’ll let him starve?” 

Stiles pushed to his feet and pulling off a pair of heavy gloves. He came up the stairs and brushed passed Peter with the strong scent of sweat and dirt following him. Stiles groaned loudly as he stepped into the cool air of the shop. A sudden sharp mental image of Stiles on his back with his knees pulled to his chest skittered across Peter’s mind. He could make him make that noise. Over and over again. 

“Any diarrhea or anything?” 

“Excuse me?” 

“Corio,” Stiles said, looking back at Peter from where he stood in front of a row of shelves lined with small bags of animal food. “How have his bathroom breaks been going?” 

“I haven’t asked him.” 

Stiles grabbed the bag Peter recognized and brought it back to the register. 

“If Chris has noticed anything just have him come by. I’ll swap it out.” 

“What makes you think he tracks the bowel movements of his dog?” 

“He’s a helicopter daddy if I’ve ever seen one,” Stiles said. “Poor guy has to get his canine pack fix from somewhere.” 

Peter didn’t tell Stiles about the measuring cup that Chris kept in Coriolanus’s airtight food container to keep it from going stale. With the concentration Chris used measuring out each portion, Peter would think he was making life saving tonics instead of feeding his dog breakfast. 

“He’s a lucky puppy to have such a devoted daddy.” 

“No need to be jealous, Stiles. I’m sure plenty of men would love to be your daddy,” Peter said. 

Stiles laughed, keying in the price of the food. “Yeah? Too bad I’ve already got a dad and I haven’t called him daddy in about ten years.” 

“Old men weep.” 

“Yeah? Are you one of them? Into the younger guys, Peter?” Stiles asked. 

“In general? Not often.” 

“What about not so general?” 

The low thrum of arousal that was in Peter’s balls constantly since his pathetic hook up with Chris three nights before intensified. Stiles was looking at him with large brown eyes. He looked so innocent, even with Peter knew that was just as deceiving as any number of other things in his shop. 

“There are always exceptions to rules,” Peter said. 

“Am I an exception?” 

“Do you want to be?” 

Stiles looked at him before the corner of his mouth hardly turned up. “You want to tell me what the fuck you’re doing flirting with a guy half your age while you’re buying food for your husband’s dog?” 

“You started that,” Peter said, taking out his debit card and handing it to Stiles. 

“Well you’ve been like three quick jerks from nutting since you walked in here.” 

“Being horny isn’t a reason to hit on me, Stiles.” 

“Being horny isn’t reason enough to cheat on your husband.” 

“It’s not cheating. We have an arrangement.” 

“For?” 

“He can go months at a time without sex. I can’t, so occasionally I go outside of our relationship for physical needs.” 

“Oh yeah?” 

“Yes.” 

“How big is your dick?” 

“I don’t know that I want to answer that.” 

“Well I’m not going to waste my time playing telephone with your husband if you’re dick isn’t even in my wheelhouse.” 

“I didn’t ask you to play telephone.” 

“Do you want to fuck me or not?” 

Peter frowned. “Fine.” 

“So, dick size.” 

“Seven and a half on a good day.” 

“Thick?” 

“I’ve never had any complaints.” 

“Yeah, but have you heard the good kind of complaints? The ‘oh you’re too big. Slower’?” Stiles asked. His voice got breathy and high pitched at the end. Peter wasn’t impressed with the way his body responded at all. 

“Yes, but obviously people can fake it,” Peter said. 

Stiles smiled, his cheek dimpling. “I don’t ever fake it. If you aren’t good I’ll let you know.” 

“How comforting.” 

“I’m a big fan of honesty,” Stiles said. “It’s the best policy.” 

“So they say.” 

“They do. So next time Chris comes in I’m going to ask him if it’s okay if you pound my ass like a drum.” 

“I’m sure he would appreciate the tact of that phrasing.” 

“I am all that is tact,” Stiles said, leaning off the counter. “Okay, get the fuck out. I actually have things to do today and you aren’t one of them.” 

Peter took his bag from the counter. “Goodbye, Stiles.” 

“Bye.” 

The heavy damp heat in the air was nearly suffocating as Peter stepped out. A small amount of green near the foundation of the building caught his eyes. There were already small sprigs of wolf’s bane in the dark soil. 

 

 

They had never been early risers unless they were getting paid. If the sun was still hazy above the horizon, then Peter needed to know that every moment that he was awake was being heavily compensated. So when he woke up past noon and Chris wasn’t in bed, he was vaguely surprised. Chris went to sleep after him very early that morning. He strained his hearing, but couldn’t hear anything within the walls of their house.

He got out of bed and the soles of his feet were immediately coated in dust as he went to the hall. The old carpet wiped it off. He hated to think of what else was being added.

When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he could see the backyard through thin floor to ceiling windows. Chris was in the backyard. He had something in his hands that Peter couldn’t make out until he threw it and a football spiraled against the clear sky. 

Coriolanus darted from out of Peter’s line of sight after it.

Peter went to the kitchen and started to make the coffee he’d bought a few days before. He picked up his own blend before putting it down and taking Chris’s from the shelf. It was enjoyable enough with an extra spoonful of sugar.

As the coffee maker started to pop, he filled the dog’s water bowl and measured out his food. He had just finished when the sliding door rolled back and Chris and Coriolanus came in. 

Chris already smelled hot and mildly sweaty. The scent of outside dog followed him a moment later before Peter heard Coriolanus taking large sloppy drinks from his bowl. One of his heads looked up at Peter, panting before his tail wagged.

“This is all it took to make you a morning person?” Peter asked, still looking at the dog.

“He woke me up chewing on my hand.”

“What a tyrant.”

“He can already play fetch,” Chris said, petting the dog’s back before scratching behind one of his ears. The dog stopped drinking to drag its sopping wet tongue over Chris’s wrist. “Only two of his heads are interested. One will drop the ball at my feet and the other makes me play tug-o-war. The third one couldn’t care less.”

Peter laughed slightly before taking down two mugs and pouring the little coffee that was already in the pot.

“Is that your coffee or mine?”

“Yours.”

“Thanks,” Chris said, kissing Peter before sitting at the table covered in paint swatches, floor samples, and tile. “Did you call the construction company yet?”

“Yes. I have a few request for bids. Do you want to make yourself scarce or would you like to be here when they come?”

“I think I want to be here,” Chris said, pulling the samples towards him. “I may go talk to Stiles, see if he has anything like that shop in Merikan to mellow me out.”

“I’m sure he’ll have something similar,” Peter said. He tapped his fingers on the maroon laminate counters he couldn’t wait to get rid of. “I’m considering spending time with him.”

Chris looked up from his paint samples. Peter frowned. He should’ve chosen a time to do this when Chris wasn’t looking for colors for their bedroom. Now he may see Forest Moss and always think of this conversation.

“Okay,” Chris said.

“Are you sure? You don’t generally interact with my friends.”

“I don’t care.”

“He’s going to ask you if you're comfortable with it.”

“That’s fine,” Chris said, looking at the samples, moving tiles against the colors, moving different swatches of paint against each other like he was trying to solve a puzzle. “What about this?”

Peter put a hand on his shoulder and looked over him. “Is the tile metallic?”

“It says it’s a satin.”

“I like it. Not with that paint color. The toupe is better.”

“It seems dark.”

“I don’t think it will be with the vanity. We’ll have them put in good lighting.”

Chris swapped the paint color he’d chosen for the one Peter picked and tilted his head. “It does look nice.”

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

Chris smiled slightly. Peter leaned over and kissed his cheek. Chris tilted back until Peter could kiss him upside down.

“Don’t mess up our contact. He’s got the best inventory we’ve had access to in a long time.”

“Have a little faith,” Peter asked, smiling slightly. “Love you.”

“I love you too.”

Then Peter’s knee unhinged as the dog ran into his calf and slumped against him, making him sway. He looked down at Coriolanus, one of his mouths clamped around his ankle, and the other two were biting at each other.

“Your mutt is pathetic.”

“He’s a diva like his dad,” Chris said, reaching back to squeeze Peter’s thigh, but not looking up from his swatches. He was arranging another color set with carpet and wooden floor samples with the concentration of a man trying to defuse a bomb.

“I’m going to get dressed and take the dog on a jog.”

“Have fun,” Chris said, moving the pieces around again, and again until Peter left the room.

 

 

The day before the contractor Peter hired was supposed to be in the house with their crew, Chris drove to The Haven. There would be seventeen people working on his and Peter’s twenty-five hundred square foot house. There was hardly going to be enough room to breathe, let alone find a spot to get away from all of them. 

It would be worth it to get the scent of the previous owners out of their home, but the idea of it was making his skin crawl. 

The front door of the shop was open as he walked up the small creaky porch. He wrinkled his lip as the wind changed direction. Green vines were crawling up the side of the building, nearly to the roof. They had purple and blue flowers. They smelled like bleach. Chris held his breath and stepped inside the front door, closing it behind him. 

The shop was brighter than last time he was there. Windows he hadn’t realized were there before were open with shutters propped on sticks. The air was hazy with dust and smoke that smelled of cinnamon and mint. 

“Hello?” 

“Back here,” Stiles called. 

Chris followed his voice to the open back door. Stiles was laying on the boardwalk with a bucket of fish beside him. The silver bodies of catfish and garr bobbed at the surface of the bayou. 

The white-gray of one of the large garr’s scales glittered as its long-toothed snout broke the surface. Stiles tipped a small perch into its mouth. 

“Sorry. They like their lunch when they like it.” 

“You’re fine,” Chris said, leaning on the doorframe. 

The three greenhouses still stood like sentries against the trees. He could see shadows moving in the two he and Peter hadn’t been in the. Nothing moved in the third, but he could see the silhouette of trees. 

“One is in the middle of a snow storm and the other’s in a sand storm, but by all means feel free to poke around,” Stiles said, looking where he was looking. “Personally I’d wait for a calmer day when I can actually show you some of my favorite guys in there.” 

“That sounds better.” 

“I thought it might,” Stiles said, looking up at him with a smile. 

He had an arrogant smile, like Peter. If Peter could be a little less predictable with his choices that would be refreshing. The power helped too. One day he was probably going to walk into Peter fucking a light socket, just for the thrill. 

Then Chris looked back at the water as a large-scaled body slid against Stiles’s hand resting on the dark water’s surface. All Chris saw was its roughly back like an alligator, but so much larger. It didn’t move like an alligator either, its back rose in humps through the water like a whale. It’s scales almost seemed to shimmer. 

“Isn’t that cool? It’s how she attracts prey.” 

“It is,” Chris said. 

He wanted to see all of the animal beneath the surface, if it had legs or fins, sharp teeth like an alligator or like a snake. 

“Are you here to get food for your monster already?” Stiles asked, reaching into the small bucket of fish and feeding another directly into a flathead catfish’s mouth. 

“I could stand to get a bag. He eats like he has a tapeworm.” 

“Yeah good luck with that. He won’t grow out of it. I figured you guys could probably afford his habit.” 

“He’s worth it,” Chris said, “But I came by to see if you had anything to help me stomach the construction workers being in the house.” 

“Don’t like strangers in your territory?” Stiles asked, before pushing up from the boardwalk and wiped his hands on his jeans. He walked passed and Chris could smell fish oil on him. 

“It’s not my favorite thing,” Chris said, looking back at the water where the fish mouths still bobbed.

The large-scaled back of the other creature had turned and was coming closer to the walkway again. Chris went to the bait bucket. 

“Can I feed it?” 

“Sure,” Stiles said. 

Chris took the largest fish he saw and crouched, holding it above the water. The bait’s mouth mouth skimmed the surface. 

The marsh had to be deeper than it looked. There was no way any less than sixty foot of water could be holding something that size. 

“If you get scared she’ll take your hand with the fish,” Stiles said. 

Chris nodded, but didn’t take his eyes from the creature moving toward him. He could smell it on the air, sour and dense, like a cottonmouth. The garr and catfish in front of Chris darted as it came closer, leaving the smallest ripples on the surface in their wake. Less than five feet from him, the surface tension broke and the animal speared its head from the water. 

It held a portion of its body above the water, enough that it had to look down on him with its large mouth opened, showing teeth larger and thicker than any snake’s Chris has ever seen. Brown water dripped from the beard of moss growing from its chin and down its throat. 

Its already small eyes slitted farther and a low growl rattled the air like a rattlesnake’s warning as thin fins flared from its neck, raining water on Chris’s face and the boardwalk. Every detail of its face became clearer as Chris felt his eyes shift. He could see its pulse point beneath the thick skin of its throat. If he bit deeply enough, he could pierce the arterial vein that ran beside its windpipe. 

“Give her the fish,” Stiles said. 

As soon as he moved the bait, the creature’s deadlock stare with him ended. It made another low rumble, its neck fins fluttering. Chris held the fish out, then pulled the bait closer when it darted toward him. It paused, looking at him before moving closer more slowly. As soon as it had the fish in its mouth, Chris held it tight with one hand and ran his free hand over the cool rough scales of its neck. He hand fell away covered in mud and sediment as the creature tilted up its head and choked the fish down whole. 

Chris took another large bait fish from the bucket and held it out. The creature took that one from him too before Stiles said something in an unknown language. Its neck fins flared again before it slid back into the water with hardly a splash. The level rose by at least three inches when it was settled beneath the surface. 

“Your wolf would take on a fucking yeti,” he said, sounding annoyed even as he laughed. He took the bait bucket and dumped it in the water. 

“I wanted to see it.” 

“Obviously,” Stiles said, giving Chris a push back toward the shop when he stood up. “I can’t leave you out here. You’ll get yourself killed.” 

Chris let Stiles push him back into the shop. He left the door open behind them and Chris was glad for it. He liked the two exits, the cross breeze, the light. 

“So how’s he doing?” Stiles asked, going to one shelf at the back of the shop and grabbing the same bag of food he’d given them when they took Coriolanus home. 

“Good. He seems to like us.” 

Stiles picked up another small bag, the bag of treats that Peter gave Coriolanus way too often to try and win his loyalty over Chris’s. It didn’t matter, when Chris called his name, Coriolanus came running, even if he was in Peter’s lap when he did it. The same couldn’t be said in reverse. 

“Great,” Stiles said. “So the wanting to eat construction workers? Is it as soon as they come onto the property, into the house, when they’re around Peter?” 

“The house. I can deal with the irritation from the other things.” 

“How long have you been bitten?” Stiles asked, leaning on his desk. 

“Almost twenty years.” 

“Not an alpha though, right?” 

“No, not an alpha.” 

“Allergic to anything?” 

“No.” 

Stiles grabbed a small notepad from beside the register and started to take notes with a fountain pen. Whatever he was writing didn’t look legible, but he seemed to read it fine. 

“I can have something ready by tomorrow. Want me to deliver or do you want to pick it up?” 

“One of us will come get it,” Chris said. “What is it going to do?” 

“Make you not want to eat people when they start ripping apart your house. I give Dad a mild dose of something like it to Dad when officials from other counties come to the police station.” 

“I can’t imagine that going over well.” 

“Nah. To be fair the officials don’t like being sent here anymore than he likes them being here so it only happens like once a year.” 

“Probably still too often.” 

“Probably.” 

“How much?” Chris asked, pulling out his wallet. 

“Dog food and treats, the normal. The medicine, try it, see if it works. If it does pay me then.” 

“But you’re putting in work now.” 

“Yeah, but if it doesn’t work then it doesn’t work.” 

“Fine,” Chris said, giving Stiles cash and taking his change. 

“And by the way, I told Peter you weren’t allowed to come get food without Corio,” Stiles said. 

“He told me. I’ll bring him next time. I was just out already,” Chris said. 

“Fine. Guess I’ll let it slide,” Stiles said. He paused even after the register gave the beep that everything was settled. There was a divot between his eyes before he looked at Chris. “This is awkward, but I’d feel bad if I didn’t ask-.” 

“About what Peter talked to you about,” Chris said. 

“Yeah,” Stiles said, his cheek biting as he chewed inside before he stopped and looked at Chris. 

“He’s not lying,” Chris said. 

“What’s okay and what’s not?” Stiles asked. 

Stiles was looking at him with a kind of earnestness that Chris had never seen on the face of one of Peter’s fuckbuddies. Granted, normally he didn’t meet them, but he had two or three over the years and usually that was the last time Peter saw them. 

“I don’t get involved in what happens between him and his fuckbuddies.” 

“So he’s the only one that sleeps with other people?” 

“I’m not interested in sex with anyone but him.” 

“But does it upset you that he sleeps with other people?” Stiles asked. “I’m not asking for the morality police, you guys do whatever the fuck you do and what works, but I don’t want to participate if it’s something that hurts your feelings.” 

“It doesn’t bother me. I understand that handjobs every month, a blow job every six, and fucking every two years isn’t enough.” 

It wasn’t enough for him and he was the one withholding. He didn’t want sex daily or even weekly sometimes, but he wanted it more than they had it. But he wasn’t stupid enough to think that the sex Peter had with other people compared to what they did together. Maybe it was because they had it so rarely, but when they could make love it felt like pressing live wires together. 

Peter and anyone else, they were just fucking. 

Peter belonged to him. 

The wolf twisted in his thoughts. It preened. 

“Okay, so I’ll probably take him up on the offer?” Stiles said. “If you ever want that to stop, just say something.” 

“I will,” Chris said. 

Stiles held out his hand and Chris smiled faintly. When Stiles smiled he was a handsome kid. The dimples on his cheek were charming and just a little bit arrogant. He could see the appeal. Then again Peter never fucked an ugly person. 

“If you ever want to fuck around that’d be okay with me too,” Stiles said. 

Chris laughed, dropping his eyes and pulling his hand away. “I’ll keep that in mind.” 

The entity in his head stirred and huffed a growl Chris felt along his spine. It would rip the kid to pieces if given half a chance. He felt his eyes shift, but Stiles didn’t even look away. There wasn’t an ounce of fear in his face, in his scent. He was brave, stupid, but brave. 

 

 

The following day, Chris asked Peter to go to The Haven. Chris and their dad were in the backyard with their brother-in-law inspecting the giant river birch that loomed over the roof. It seemed healthy enough, but it would only take one limb from it to crush them. With only a few months between them and the wet season, it would be better done now than wake up with a limb through their kitchen or over their bed. 

Peter took Chris’s SUV again and at the narrowing of the dirt road that lead to The Haven, he rolled down the window and reached for one of the veins nearest his driver side mirror. It looked close enough to touch, but every time it tried, it was just out of reach. He leaned as far out of the car as he could with his seatbelt done and the small green leaves still avoided him. 

He was tempted to get out and see just how far the magic went, but he pulled through the narrowing until the path widened and Stiles’s shop sat the to the side. 

The wolf’s bane he had watched him plant was now on a trellis, winding to the roof, and up one side of the porch. It was sprouting purple flowers with yellow stoma. As Peter got out of the SUV and went closer, he could see the red and navy veining in the leaves. It was unlike any strain he had ever seen. 

The screen door creaked as Peter pulled it open and the interior door was open, allowing the breeze to come through. There were a set of wind chimes near Stiles’s register. They rang so quietly Peter could barely hear them. 

“Peter?” 

“Presumptuous.” 

“Come back here,” Stiles called from the room behind the counter. 

Peter went around the desk and through the narrow door. The room was bigger than he thought it would be. There were three rows of dust-filmed shelves with wide aisles between each. Some held boxes and contains, others were bare. Stiles was kneeling on the floor next to a cardboard box filled with packing styrofoam and the tops of a few objects Peter could barely see. One of them looked like a memory ball. It swirled with black. Stiles stood up and dusted his hands on his jeans barely looking at Peter before he went to the table against the wall, undid his jeans and pushed them down with his underwear. 

“Fuck me.” 

Peter didn’t have to be told twice. 

He undid his jeans and went behind Stiles. 

“I’m prepped. Just go for it,” Stiles said.

“No foreplay.” 

“I’m better at it than you I’m sure, so I’m good.” 

“I sincerely doubt that’s true, but whatever you want,” Peter said. “How do you like it?” 

“Why don’t you show me how I like it?” 

Peter pushed down his own underwear, just enough to get his dick free before he pressed behind him, pulling apart his ass cheeks and sliding against his hole. It was already wet and slightly open. Peter pressed the crown of his dick in, watching the ring of muscle clench and try to draw him in. Stiles huffed when he pulled back out. Peter pressed against him again, watching his hole clench then unfurl, heard Stiles sigh as he slipped passed his resistance. 

Stiles grunted when he pulled out again. 

“Stop teasing.” 

“I thought you wanted me to show you how you like it,” Peter said. 

When Stiles started to say something back, Peter shoved in his full length, making Stiles moan and lean against the table, his legs spreading as wide as they would go with his jeans around his knees. 

“Oh listen, he does know what he likes,” Peter said, giving Stiles a moment to adjust. 

“Yeah, that’s better,” Stiles said, his back expanding with a deep breath. 

Peter gripped his hips and started a hard pace, making Stiles brace with one hand against the wall and the other hand gripping the table edge. He smiled when Stiles started to moan, the weak slutty sounds of someone without shame. 

His back arched and his ass clenching perfectly when Peter pulled out again. Stiles groaned like he’d been punched before pushing back against him. 

“Ask nicely.” 

“Fuck you.” 

“That wasn’t very nice,” Peter said, smoothing his hands over the red handprints on his hips. “Oh how sweet, you’re gaping. I knew you were cute. I didn’t expect a cockwhore too.” 

“I knew you were a dick. I wasn’t expecting a fucking tease,” Stiles said. 

“But weren’t you?” Peter asked, pressing his dick down slightly and sliding right back into Stiles’s body. The sound he made was ball clenching. “There are so many things I’d love to do to you, Stiles. This doesn’t even scratch the surface.” 

Stiles groaned and bit his hand. Peter reached beneath him and squeezed his dick, his hand getting tacky with cooling precum. Stiles flexed his hips forward, humping against his hand. 

Peter fucked him in time with jerking him off and Stiles came beautifully. Not too soon, not too slow. He left plenty of time for Peter to use his still seizing body in the aftermath and empty into him. 

When he pulled out, his legs felt weak. 

Stiles’s forehead was pressed against his hand, still leaned over the table, and breathing hard. 

“That was okay,” Stiles said. 

“I could tell.” 

Stiles moaned again, his ass barely arching. Peter ran his hand over one of his cheeks. They were moled like the cheeks on his face. Peter ran his thumb over one of them before giving it a slap. 

Stiles yelped and pulled up his pants, turning around. 

“Tomorrow at four?” Stiles asked. 

“Aren’t you needy?” 

“I haven’t been fucked in like two months.”

“Cry me a fucking river,” Peter said, grabbing a rag from the table and wiping his dick before buttoning his jeans. “The contractors will be there tomorrow. I can’t leave Chris alone with them.” 

“Fine then come after they leave.” 

“Fine,” Peter said. “I did actually come here to get Chris’s medication.” 

“Yeah,” Stiles said, looking on the table behind him at a few rows of small bottles before he grabbed a dark green one and handed it to Peter. Peter tucked it in the pocket of his jeans. Stiles smiled slightly, his skin still slightly red and his breathing still unsteady. “That was okay.” 

Peter snorted. “It’ll do I suppose.” 

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Bye, Peter.” 

Peter blew him a kiss as he walked back into the main area of the shop. He heard Stiles cuss slightly under his breath and couldn’t help smiling slightly as he walked back into the heat.


	3. Chapter 3

By four the next afternoon, Chris’s skin felt like it was crawling. The whir of the powertools was constant, the dust made it hard to breathe, the people talking, yelling, across rooms and through walls made his ears ring. 

“Why don’t you get out for a while?” Peter asked. 

Chris jerked, turning away from the large window overlooking their property on the second floor. He hadn’t heard Peter over the drill in the bathroom a few doors away. The hair at the nape of his neck tingled. 

“Both of us don’t need to be here,” Peter said. 

Drywall dust was all over him. Chris ran his fingers through Peter’s hair and shook it out. His hair was a few shades darker when Chris wiped his hand on his jeans, leaving pale streaks on the denim. 

“You’re dirty.” 

“You aren’t much better,” Peter said. “Take Coriolanus. Get out for awhile.” 

“I don’t want to leave you here alone.” 

“I fuck a werewolf. A few construction workers don’t scare me.” 

Chris snorted. 

“How is the tonic working?” Peter asked. 

“Better than nothing. I would’ve killed the son of a bitch who splintered the garage door otherwise,” Chris said. 

“We were replacing it anyway,” Peter said. “Go, get your dog. He’s under the bed.” 

“He’s too big to fit under there.” 

“Tell him that.” 

Chris went down the hall into their bedroom. He could hear people in the bathroom, but he tried not to look at them as he got on his hands and knees beside the bed. Three pairs of eyes reflected back at him near the wall. 

“Come here, buddy.” 

Coriolanus’s tail wagged, but he didn’t move. The parasite in his head pressed against his forehead. Going under the bed seemed like a great idea for a split moment. 

“Come.” 

The dog wiggled closer, flattening his body as much as possible. He started to lick at the air when he was toward the edge of the bed frame. Chris scratched behind one of his ears. 

“Come on. Let’s go.” 

When Coriolanus didn’t move, Chris reached under and grabbed him behind his front legs, dragging him out with his toenails scratching the floor. 

He picked the big dog up and held him against his chest as he left the room. Coriolanus’s growl was constant beneath the other noises as Chrisl went through the house. He focused on the drone. 

When he walked out of the open front door, Peter was on the steps. He handed Chris his keys and Coriolanus’s leash. 

“Talia said the bookstore was nice and they don’t mind dogs, so you’ll both be fine,” Peter said. 

“Ha,” Chris said before he kissed him. “Call if you need me.” 

“I won’t, but okay.” 

Chris went down the new steps, so fresh they weren’t even stained before setting Coriolanus in the dirt and letting him follow him to the SUV. Within a few steps, the cicadas in the summer heat drowned the noise of construction behind them. 

  
  


 

 

 

The road into town was narrow and curvy with no shoulders, few guardrails, and only a handful of red warning signs. On some of the more severe curves, skid marks were black on the aged cement. The trees off the sides bore scars. 

The closer to town he got, the lower the speed limit dipped, until he was at a slow crawl. It was like dreaming. Everything was the same and almost right. The post office and the main gas station were in the same place, flanking the road as he drove under the large iron frame work that spelled out a welcome over the roadway. 

The asphalt turned to cobbles almost immediately. Then the two-lane road widened and the town square was in the center of the path. It was almost untouched from the one in his memory.  The stone and brick storefronts lining the square on all sides were clean and well kept. The diner on one of the corners had closed, but another had reopened with a name so similar to the original Chris could feel it creeping at the edge of his tongue. 

He parked in front of the square, his headlights facing the court house that sat in the center. There was a large blue stone statue of The Judgement in front of it, shaded by three massive oaks. To the right were three wolves made of the same material. Chris went around the SUV and let Coriolanus out, buckling his leash to the collar on his center neck. Chris let him lead them to the grass with all of his noses to the ground. 

In the shade, the humidity fell. Large wind chimes hung from the trees with strands of purple flowered wisteria. The chimes were made of different metals, stones, and wood. They all had images carved into the tubes. They clanged together in the slight breeze with a hundred different sounds. 

They used to hang people from the tree closest to the courthouse. The last was over a hundred years before Chris was born, but the bald spot in the bark where the lowest limb had once been was still there. 

Now people were sitting beneath it. A pale blanket spread on the dark green. There were children running beside them. He felt his eyes shift as he watched the humans that were less than five years old, still clumsy and slow, as their high prey-like laughter rang in his ears. 

It only took a small tug of the leash to bring him back to himself, like falling from a funnel and being spat on the cobblestones of the sidewalk. They were the same kind that were rough under the SUV’s mud tires on the main street behind them. He could hear the creak and sway of other vehicles’ springs and struts as they passed. 

The statue of The Judgement stood in the center of the walkway. 

It needed to be cleaned. Water stains ran black over its genderless face, down the blindfold, and over the full mouth. In one hand was a lantern. Black flames flickered in the center. 

Like when he was a boy, Chris measured how far he had to go to make the fire change color. Fifteen rows of cobblestones. Then it flickered, wavered and almost looked like they would go out before it caught and green fire replaced it. He took a step closer and flame ignited to black again. 

He followed the sidewalk to left side of the square from where he’d parked. The bookstore was still in the same long segment of brick buildings across the narrow one-way lane with cars parked on either side. The gold leaf lettering of its name on the window looked as fresh as it had when he was a boy. 

When they walked in, the scent of paper and coffee suffocated his senses. A young woman was behind the cash register on a computer. She looked up and smiled at Chris, but didn’t say anything as they went by. There was a spoon in her coffee. It was spinning in the center, creating a slow lazy whirlpool. 

The shelves seemed shorter. 

When he and Peter used to come here as boys they’d seemed like towers. They could play hide-and-seek for hours while Talia read and talked with her friends at the tables by the cafe. The clerk must have hated them, but they were always quiet. That was the point. 

Chris made a circle around the outer shelves. Looking at the books, but watching Coriolanus every few seconds. He sniffed the book spines and the carpet with two of his heads, but one always kept an eye on him. 

When someone talked an aisle over, all three heads watched the shelves before looking at Chris. Chris crouched down to look at a lower shelf and petted him. The dog sat beside him and licked his hand, continuing to stare where the disembodied voices were coming from. 

Chris could barely smell the sawdust and drywall powder on Coriolanus’s fur over the books. That’s why Peter had loved his place so much. For once, the playing field was even when Chris hunted him. 

He put the book he’d taken back. It was a comedy. He could barely watch them on TV, let alone read them. When he started to slide the book into its spot, he felt a small tug on his hand. When it persisted, he pulled away and watched the book move through the air by itself, reseating itself two books down from where he was putting it. It kept the alphabetical order. 

He looked at the tags above the aisles and followed them to the supernatural. There were spines of all different materials, shades, and sizes, but the thick book he was looking for was so familiar it was easy to pick out from the spine alone. He pulled it from its row and the suede wrapped casing was still soft, not matted and worn down from years of his and Peter’s hands, being thrown into duffle bags, and shoved into convenient nooks in the truck. 

His copy was at home in one of the boxes they were waiting to take out of storage once everything was finished. He flipped through the pages that still stuck together with newness until he reached the marsh creatures on muscle memory.

There weren’t very many serpents in the section. 

None of them came close to what he’d seen behind The Haven. 

For a moment, he considered buying the copy, but he put it back. His was at home. He just needed to put the time in to find it. 

He wandered farther along the shelves. 

In the history section, an older man in a police uniform was reading in front of modern warfare. Chris couldn’t see much of his face and didn’t try as he stood a few shelves away looking at books over The Great War.  The ancient things were dull, but his nerves were still raw from the house. Going and browsing near a stranger just to see what they had on recent centuries was more than he cared to do. 

Then the air hardly moved, just enough to raise the hairs on his arms. A small scent came beneath the cloak of paper. Werewolf. 

Chris growled at the same time Coriolanus barked. When he turned he was face-to-face with John Stilinski.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” he said. 

“You’re fine. Just-.” 

  
“The smell. I know. It’s a good reprieve from the outside world, but a little unsettling,” John said. The pressure in Chris’s head still pounded faintly, but his vision wasn’t pulsing like it had done for a split second.  

“I’d recognize that dog anywhere,” John said, looking down at Corilanus with a small smile before he looked back up. “But I almost didn’t recognize you. It’s been too long, Chris.”  

He held out his hand and Chris shook it. 

“It has been.” 

Coriolanus growled. 

John looked down at him again before letting go of Chris’s hand and crouching. “Did you really forget that quickly?” 

Maybe Coriolanus was baiting, maybe his eyesight was bad, but as soon as John was near his eye-level, he jumped on him, all three mouths licking.

“Yeah. You’re a good boy,” John said, petting him for a few more moments before he stood up. “I’m glad he found a good home.” 

“We like him alright,” Chris said. 

“Stiles mentioned you and Peter were still getting settled or I would’ve come by before now,” John said. 

“You don’t want to now. It’s a disaster.” 

“I’m sure. That place needed some work. I’m glad you guys came back to fix it up.” 

“It was too convenient not to.” 

“It’s right against your parents’ place isn’t it?” 

Chris nodded. John knew it was beside his and Peter’s parents’, but it wouldn’t be friendly if he didn’t ask. It would violate some unwritten rule if he just let on that he knew, that he kept track of that kind of thing even when people should expect it. 

“When was the last time you had a range like that on a full moon?” John asked. His unnaturally sharp canines showed when he smiled. 

“Since we moved from here.” 

“You were too much of a pup to appreciate it then.” 

“I was.” 

He didn’t realize how good it felt to be able to run as far and as fast as he could and know he wasn’t going to trip into territory that wasn’t his. He didn’t know how good it felt to track rabbits, deer, and birds in underbrush for hours how he had the first night of the full moon. He’d forgotten how freeing it was to know that he could run without catching the scent of human for hours among land that hadn’t been touched by a human hand in centuries. 

“I’m sure you’re enjoying getting used to all of that right now, but just so you know you’re free to run with the pack any time you want.” 

He’d offered it when Chris was a boy and freshly turned, but Chris felt his face warming slightly. There was a big difference between offering to let a ten year old boy, a ten year old pup, run with his pack and letting a grown hunter and Deadfall werewolf. 

“Thank you. I’ll keep it in mind.” 

“Let me know or let the boy know. We’d love to have you.” 

“I will.” 

“I hope you do,” John said, leaning down to pet Coriolanus again. “My lunch is over, but I’ll see you around.” 

“Have a good day.” 

“You too,” John said, patting him on the shoulder before he walked toward the cash register. 

Chris watched him go before moving into the space he’d stood in. 

 

***

 

Crickets and frogs were almost deafening in the marsh outside of Stiles’s bedroom window as Peter sat on the edge of his bed and buttoned his jeans. His shadow was thrown on the walls, back lit by blue, purple, and green as orbs of light pulsed and floated around Stiles’s room. 

“What are those?” Peter asked. 

“Gas lights,” Stiles said, laying back on his navy sheets.

“Are they alive?” 

“Nah.” 

Peter stared at the orbs for a while longer. They had cast Stiles’s pale lean body in all different shades when Peter had sucked his cock after Stiles had done the same to him.

“How did the meds work for Chris?” 

“He lasted longer in the house than he would’ve otherwise.” 

“How much longer?” 

“A few hours.” 

“So he still had to leave?” 

“Around four. He went to the bookstore with his mutt,” Peter said, looking back at Stiles. “He saw your father.” 

“Yeah? Dad’s been wanting to talk to him.” 

“He wants him to come here on the full moon.” 

“My dad, the werewolf welcome wagon.” 

“Apparently.” 

“Has Chris ever spent a full moon with a pack?” Stiles asked. 

Peter shook his head. “We hunt werewolves. They don’t welcome him with open arms. Throw in him being a Deadfall and most won’t come near him with a ten foot pole.” 

“You only hunt fucked up wolves.” 

Peter hummed. He’d seen how wolves reacted to Chris. He liked John. He thought his intentions were good, but he wouldn’t encourage Chris into a situation where he could be harassed or injured. Rage tickled the root of his spine at the thought. 

“Dad wouldn’t let anyone be stupid,” Stiles said. “I wouldn’t.” 

Peter stared at him. If he could read thoughts, he would appreciate it if he would keep his mental fingers out of his head. Stiles smiled. The green orb glowed the strongest, reflecting in his dark eyes and on his teeth. 

“I can’t read your thoughts. You’re just predictable.” 

“If you can. Don’t,” Peter said. 

“Or what?” Stiles asked, smiling slightly. 

Peter didn’t have anything polite to say so he said nothing as he stood. He picked up his phone and was made temporarily blind as he checked for messages. There was nothing, but that didn’t surprise him. It was late. When he’d left the house Chris had already been headed to bed. 

“If he wants that medicine stronger I can come get some toenail clippings from him on the full moon. If I put a little of him back in it concentrates the effort and boosts the effects.” 

“I’ll let him know,” Peter said, going toward the door. “Text me when you want to do this again.” 

“Who says I want to?” 

“Not all of us have to be mind readers,” Peter said. 

“Ha. Ha. The vials by my register are for your husband. Tell him to take one every morning with a full glass of water.” 

“I’ll tell him.” 

“Sweet dreams,” Stiles said. “Don’t forget to give Chris a goodnight kiss for me.” 

Peter looked back at him, where he was laid on his bed like the laziest most self satisfied cat in the world. 

“Text me,” he said. 

Stiles blew an air kiss at him as Peter pulled the door closed. 

Peter walked back through the dark magic shop, hearing the old floors creak beneath his weight, and some of Stiles’s companions moving in their cages as he left through the front door. The flame of the old lantern still flickered against the dark. 

  
  
  
  


When he got home, all the lights were off except for the small night light plugged into the wall by the front door. Talia had gotten it for them for their first apartment. It was shaped like the moon. 

He went up the stairs, now raw wood, and down the hall to his and Chris’s bedroom. Chris and the dog were in bed. One of Coriolanus’s ears twitched. Chris didn’t move at all as Peter stripped off his clothes. He went into the bathroom with his shoes still on to avoid nails. He wetted his shirt and scrubbed his dick clean of Stiles’s saliva. 

He closed the bathroom door behind him so that Coriolanus wouldn’t go in and get something sharp in his foot then sat on the edge of the bed and wiped his feet before sliding beneath the sheets and against Chris’s back. 

Chris growled. 

“My poor love, worn out from protecting his territory,” Peter said, rubbing his nose against Chris’s neck, feeling the soft burr of his hair. 

Chris growled again before he rolled toward him. His eyes were barely open. Peter cupped his cheek. 

“I got more medicine. Take it when you wake up with water.” 

“Thanks,” Chris said, his voice thick with sleep. 

“Thank Stiles.” 

Chris pressed against Peter’s pillow. “It’s about time you get a useful fuckbuddy.” 

“Mhm,” Peter said, dragging his nails up Chris’s back just to hear his soft purr that was entirely human. “He wants to come here on the full moon and get some toenail clipping from you to try and make it stronger. You won’t eat him will you?” 

“I don’t think so.” 

“That’s very reassuring.” 

“It’s all I’ve got.”

“I’ll tell him to come at his own risk.”

“Shh. They’ll be here at eight.”

“Does my big bad wolf have to meet them at the door? Make sure they don’t put a nail out of place?”

Chris growled again. He was so vocal tonight. Something fluttered in Peer’s chest as he laughed and brushed his cheek again.

“Stop it,” Chris said.

Peter laughed softly at the whine before Chris wrapped his arm around him and dragged him down. He pushed his face against Peter’s throat and face before he growled louder, deeper. Peter pushed against him, getting as much of Chris’s scent on him as he could to mellow that noise.

Chris pulled him closer then slumped on top of him.

“I’d like to be able to breathe.”

“Then you should’ve showered.”

“Our showers aren’t working.”

“Deal with it,” Chris said, marking his throat and shoulder again before his body relaxed.

Peter could shove him off whenever he wanted, but it was hardly the first time Chris had fallen asleep on top of him and it would be far from the last. It started when they were young. A lot of times they’d been naked too, but it never meant a thing. It never meant Chris wanted to have sex with him. It was never anything romantic. Then it had been a puppy being jealous. It was the same thing now with three times the weight.

Peter put his arms around Chris’s lower back and relaxed as much as he could. In a little while he’d have to push him off, to breathe, to not drown in his own sweat, but for a little while he let Chris sleep deeply, lying so still he believed he could feel his heartbeat.

  
  
  


 

The workers were there the week before the full moon. 

They would be there for over a month, maybe longer. The door pulls for the kitchen were out of stock, the wrong stove was ordered, the sink in the master suite were installed incorrectly the first time. It was a large project. Peter understood mistakes happened, but it didn’t make him stomach it any easier.  

Chris handled it worse. 

The day of the full moon, Peter sent the workers home by four. Chris was already at their mother’s house. He’d gone there the night before with dark places beneath his eyes and his skin pale. After seeing him off, Peter had texted Stiles. 

He got home from The Haven at nearly three in the morning. 

He slept like a rock, sated and loose-limbed until he was woken by the sound of hammers. 

There was progress. He could see it if he could overlook being able to see through where their living room wall should be and into the kitchen. The cabinets were ripped out. Wiring was exposed. Most of the ceiling was gone. 

Chris showed up as the sun was dipping behind the tips of the trees and Peter was walking around the kitchen, dust and debris crackling under the soles of his boots, as he tried to imagine what it would look like in the end. 

“You look better,” Peter said, as Chris came in. 

Chris stared around them, frowning at where the ceiling should be. 

“Did they do anything today?”

“They finished our bathroom.” 

Which finished their master suite. Meaning that Chris now had somewhere in the house to retreat from the noise, the dust, and strangers. 

“I thought they wouldn’t work out of order.” 

“They were fine with it after you snarled at the contractor yesterday. I just told them I needed a finished room to throw you when you became dangerous.”

Chris looked away from the mess and at him. Peter wasn’t sure if he could look less impressed. “You told them I was dangerous?” 

“You are. To them,” Peter said. “Is Talia bringing Mom?” 

“Yes.” 

“And Derek?” 

“He’s hunting a stigini in Broken Bow.” 

“With Jordan?” 

“Mhm,” Chris said. “They came by the house last night. He might not be a coward like his brother, but I still don’t like him.” 

“You don’t like anyone.” 

“The Parrishes are shit and you know it.” 

“Just because they aren’t as good as we are doesn’t make them shit. That’s such a high standard to hold people to,” Peter said. 

“He can be whatever he wants as long as he doesn’t get Derek killed.” 

“I’m sure he won’t,” Peter said. “If he does we can always kill him. An eye for an eye.” 

Chris nodded. His eyes were yellow. They glowed in the orange of sunset streaming in through the back windows. 

“Why don’t you go see our bathroom and shift,” Peter said. 

“Where is Coriolanus?” 

“In the backyard. Go do what I said,” Peter said. 

Chris’s lip twitched at the order, but he turned. Peter could see his feet through the framing of the walls as he climbed the stairs.  

When he heard him on the second floor, Peter went through the newly installed doors to the back deck. The old one had been ripped out and the new one was mostly finished. The planks were vibrant in the low light. The built-in flower beds along the house and the far side of the porch were still bare and empty. 

He didn’t know when he’d become the type to want to weed and water a flower bed or when he became the kind of person who had the time. He moved the wooden chairs he’d custom ordered. Three were made to seat one and two benches to seat couples or one large wolf that thought he was above sleeping on the ground. 

He was still arranging things when he heard Coriolanus run up the stairs. The dog latched on to the ankle of his jeans. 

Then Peter heard a soft thump. He looked back toward the house and Chris standing at the doors, nosing them, then wagging his tail when they made eye contact. Peter opened it and Coriolanus let go of his leg to barrel into Chris’s legs, knocking them from under him. They hit the deck, the dog growling and mouthing at Chris’s face. Peter watched the lines of Chris’s body before he heard him growling back, the same noise he made at Peter when they would wrestle. 

They fought near his feet before running off the porch. Peter watched Chris chasing Coriolanus around the backyard for a few moments before lighting a fire in the clay fireplace and taking one of the seats to wait as night set in. 

  
  
  


 

By the time the sun was down, his mom and Talia were there. He’d taken them through the house, explained what was happening in each room before they ate the dinner his mom had cooked. Chris came and licked their hands when they sat on the porch. Coriolanus came after him, panting, and moving slowly. When Chris laid by Peter’s mom, Coriolanus sprawled, sleeping so hard Peter could hear him snore. 

“Poor Doll. He can’t keep up,” his mom said. 

“He lasted a few hours,” Peter said, looking at the dog that was still a pup. He would be large, but Chris still dwarfed him. Unless he had a miraculous growth spurt, Chris always would. 

When his phone vibrated he took it out of his pocket. 

Stiles:  _ So still on for me coming tonight?  _

_ At your own discretion.  _

Stiles:  _ Duh.  _

Stiles:  _ Be there in a few hours.  _

_ We’ll be here.  _

“Work?” Talia asked. 

“No. A friend is coming by later.” 

“You’ve made a friend?” His mom asked. “Is it someone you knew from before?” 

“No. It’s the owner of The Haven. We buy supplies from him. He placed Coriolanus with us.” 

“That’s nice,” his mom said at the same time Talia laughed into her wine glass. 

If they were sitting where he could get away with it, he would’ve kicked her. Her oldest daughter was known for having the loud mouth of the family. That was just because people had forgotten how Talia liked to run hers after a few glasses of wine. 

“He’s cute isn’t he?” his mom asked. “I can’t remember.” 

“He’s very cute,” Talia said, looking at Peter. “Isn’t that right?” 

“He’s not ugly,” Peter said, glaring at Talia behind their mom’s head. She laughed, but turned away.  

He didn’t miss this part of living at home. As much as he loved his family, keeping the dynamic of his and Chris’s relationship from his parents was important to him. It would be sad if he had to cut out Talia’s tongue to keep her quiet, but it was a sacrifice he was more than willing to make. 

“Have you talked to his dad? I’m sure he’d like Chris to run with them now that he’s grown,” his mom asked.

“Chris just talked to him the other days. We’ll see.” 

“That would be nice,” she said. 

Everything was nice. The weather was nice. The colors they’d chosen for the rooms in their house were nice. Peter reached over and squeezed her thin hand in his own. If the alternative was for everything to be terrible then he’d take it being nice. 

“Claudia would like to see him again I’m sure,” his mom said. 

When he looked at Talia, she was brushing back a piece of gray hair from their mother’s forehead. 

“She was a very sweet woman,” their mom said. 

“She was,” Peter said. 

“The temperature is nice isn’t it?” she asked, looking at Talia then Peter. When she saw him, her smile widened wrinkling soft skin around her eyes. “I’m so glad you’re home.” 

“I am too,” Peter said, before squeezing her hand. 

Hers were always cold. He held hers between both of his as they sat and listened to the nightbirds and bugs. 

Above the yard, a few fireflies pulsed, low, slow glows in the dark. He and Chris used to chase them behind the house when they were young. They would catch as many as they could before Chris had to shift, then Peter would lay on the grass, staring at the lightening bugs behind wavered glass before his dad picked up the jar and let them go. He would normally go to tuck Peter in then, holding his hand as they walked down the quiet halls of the big house and holding the puppy that was Chris against his chest. He was always so tired he looked dead when Peter’s dad put them down together on sheets in whatever theme had caught their fancy that season. 

Peter leaned forward, his chair creaking, and Chris looked back at him. When he saw Peter hold out his hand, he came toward him, his large head low and his tail beating the air. Peter hugged him around his neck, kissing his broad forehead. Like he always had, Chris just leaned into his touch and let him. 

  
  
  
  


His mom and Talia had been gone for hours by the time Stiles texted him that he was almost there. Peter stood from the back steps and stretched, hearing his back pop like gunfire before he walked around the side of the house to meet Stiles as he saw the headlights of whatever he was driving flash across the pines that surrounded their yard. Stiles got out of a small blue SUV before he saw Peter and started toward him across the gravel drive. 

“Hey.” 

“Hello,” Peter said. 

Stiles looked like he’d been rolled in a tin sifter. His face, arms, and fingers were dark with dirt and dust. His jeans looked like they’d never come clean again. 

“Yeah I know. I look great,” Stiles said, before he could say anything. “Harvesting on the full moon gives the best ingredients. I’ve walked like five miles at this point.” 

“You look like it.” 

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Thanks.” 

Peter smiled slightly before he turned and walked back around the house with Stiles beside him. 

“Where’s Coriolanus?” 

“Asleep on the back porch. Chris wore him out,” Peter said. 

“Poor little guy. I want to see him before I leave.” 

“I’m sure we can manage that,” Peter said.

When they came into the backyard, Chris was at the rear treeline. His body was almost completely concealed against the tree trunks and the pool of shadows as he sniffed the ground. 

“He’s never attacked anyone, but we also don’t let people he hasn’t been raised around near him often,” Peter said. “No quick movements or high pitched sounds.” 

“Got it,” Stiles said. 

Peter looked at him in the blue glow of the moonlight. He just looked excited. Like there wasn’t a Deadfall Wolf within the same space as him. To Chris, he could look like no more than a rabbit. Peter felt his own heart beat more quickly. 

“Chris,” Peter said, raising his voice. 

Chris’s head snapped up and he locked on Stiles. He was completely still for a moment before he came closer. There wasn’t an ounce of fear in the rigid line of his back or shoulders. Not like in the wolves that lived in the low land that became timid in the presence of strangers. In the session of the foodchain, Deadfalls had never become convinced that they weren’t the highest link. With the sheer size of Chris, Peter couldn’t imagine why they would’ve ever had to believe they were lesser. 

“Oh wow,” Stiles said. “Aren’t you just fucking massive?” 

He crouched down and held out his hand. Chris stared at him with an intelligence that was bewildering and nothing like the cool blue logic of his husband. It was something older, something that was housed in the blood. 

“I knew he’d be big. I didn’t realize he was this huge,” Stiles said, slowly pulling his hand back when Chris didn’t move forward. 

“Even when we first took him in he was big and he was just a boy,” Peter said as he sat on the ground. 

Chris came toward him before he looked at Stiles. Peter could almost see the wheels in his head turning before he sat on Peter’s lap and started to lick his neck. 

“Quit,” Peter said, pushing his head, but Chris only started to lick his hand, then slumped on top of him, licking his ear. “Stop it.” 

Stiles smiled. “You don’t have to eat him. I don’t even want him.” 

Chris stopped, but he still laid on Peter, his upper body across his lap. Peter squeezed his neck until Chris grunted. 

“Can I see your paw? If I clip your toenails are you going to bite my hand off? Your mouth looks big enough to do it,” Stiles said as he took a handkerchief from his pocket and spread it on the grass. Then he picked up Chris’s paw, hanging over Peter’s thigh. When Chris didn’t pull away, Stiles snipped the tip off Chris’s toenails. Then he gathered the handkerchief and put it back in his pocket. “That should do it.” 

“I could’ve done that and brought it to you.” 

“Stuff is best harvested by the person that’s going to use it in the moonlight,” Stiles said. “And I wanted to see him. He’s amazing.” 

“You’re going to make him insufferable,” Peter said. 

“Yeah that’s going to spoil him. Not him using you as his personal couch.” 

“He doesn't normally do this, so thank you for that,” Peter said as Chris started licking his hand like he had no intention of stopping. 

Stiles smiled, looking at Chris like he didn’t have three greenhouses filled with magical things and powerful magical creatures should have long before lost their appeal. 

“Yeah. Poor you.” 

Then Chris stilled and looked to the north. Peter glanced up to see if there was an animal, but he couldn’t see anything in the dark. 

“Dad’s pack is starting,” Stiles said. 

Then Peter heard the howls. They started faint, almost below his register, then got louder as more wolves joined. Chris pushed out of his lap, stepping on Peter’s thigh and knee as he jerked up then started to pace, his ears erect. 

“The deeper one is Dad,” Stiles asked, but he wasn’t looking at Peter. He was looking toward the howling. “He sounds a lot like one of his betas, but his howl is just a little deeper.” 

Peter nodded, like he knew which was John. There were multiple deeper howls mixed with lighter and more melodic. It sounded like there were hundreds of them, but they all blended to his ears. 

Then Chris tilted up his chin and joined them. 

Like it always did, it rose the hair on the back of Peter’s neck. With the places they lived, getting to hear him hadn’t happened often. It was resonated in the air. Peter could almost feel the way it made the night vibrate. Even in its beauty, it still sounded like a warning, like the scream of a mountain lion, or the roar of a bear. Every instinctual cell of his ancestral brain said run and all he could do was sit transfixed. 

“Wow,” Stiles said again, quietly, like he wasn’t even aware of saying it as he stared at Chris. “He’s only the nineteenth since the Ceann Clan was disbanded. I looked it up. There’s a registry online, a few actually, kept by a few different watchers in the country.”  

A slightly bitter taste rose on the back of Peter’s tongue at the mention of the Ceann Clan. It hadn’t been a curse word in their household, but while it was a common tale told in most homes in The Falls to keep children going to bed on time and to make sure they did what their parents said, it never was in theirs. When a Deadfall werewolf slept in bed with one of their children, his parents rightly had found it unkind to tell the centuries old story of the clan of Deadfall werewolves that had hunted and eaten hundreds of humans.  

The first time Peter had heard it was at school from a group of their friends. None of them had known Chris was a Deadfall. They had only known he was a werewolf. After that, they had made sure that no one knew he was. Not until they were old enough to take care of themselves and for the fear of what Chris was to work in their favor instead of against them. 

“I didn’t know there was a registry, but I knew he was being watched. He’s never given them any reason. He’s no more dangerous than any other wolf.” 

“That’s probably not true,” Stiles said, leaning back on his hands. “Get some local idiot to go running across the yard in front of him and he’s probably going to hunt them like he would a rabbit.” 

“If someone is stupid enough to run in front of him while he’s shifted, I’d say that’s nature thinning the herd.” 

“I’m not arguing, I’m just saying they do hunt humans. He’s gorgeous and amazing, but he is a people eater.” 

“He isn’t,” Peter said, staring at Stiles. “He’s never shown any inclination and he has had the chance, time and again. He was raised with children.” 

“He was a kid too,” Stiles said. “You guys were his pack. They love their packs. Even the Ceann’s there’s not one case in all of the texts they can find and they found plenty of journals, that reports even one of them eating a pack member.” 

Peter clicked his tongue and Chris twitched his ear in front of him before coming back. Peter ran his hands up his neck and to his shoulders. 

“Not like it matters,” Stiles said, looking at them with a faint smile. “He could eat a hundred people and you’d just help him hide the bodies.” 

Peter snorted. “Like you wouldn’t do the same for your father?” 

“Oh yeah without a doubt. I’m not judging, just saying. You don’t have to get defensive about what he is in front of me. I think he’s amazing. It might help that I’m not human,” Stiles said, then winking. 

Peter laughed. “Close enough I’m sure.” 

“Maybe. I’d probably taste really bad.” 

Like he understood what was said, Chris pulled away from Peter and stared at Stiles again. His damp nose caught the moonlight as he sniffed before he went closer. He towered over Stiles where he sat on the grass, but Stiles didn’t flinch even when Chris’s large snout was near his neck as he scented his jawline. 

When the hackles of Chris’s coat raised, Peter almost grabbed him, but Stiles barely held up his hand, a slow, careful movement. 

Peter waited and felt like every muscle in his body was lined with electricity as Chris hoovered over Stiles’s throat. Then Stiles very slowly raised his hand again until he could lay his palm against Chris’s cheek. Chris’s ears angled back before a low deep growl made Peter’s heart pound faster. 

“Easy,” Stiles said quietly. “I’m just here and I’ll be gone as soon as you want me to be.” 

Stiles didn’t get above a whisper the entire time. His face was blocked from his view by Chris’s head. Chris’s lip trembled over his teeth before he nosed Stiles’s throat. Stiles’s angled up his chin. They were both so perfectly still for a moment that Peter could see Stiles’s heart beating beneath his pale skin. 

Then Chris barely pulled away. 

Stiles’s hand was still on his cheek. He petted the dark gray fur then down Chris’s neck. As soon as Chris broke the contact by coming back to Peter, Stiles took a deep breath and laughed. 

“And you think he wouldn’t eat someone?” 

“Maybe someone fucking his husband,” Peter said, taking Chris’s large head in his hands and kissed his cheek, then his snout. Chris sneezed. “He won’t eat me and that’s all I care about.” 

Chris licked his face and down his neck. Peter pushed him when a low tingle started in his stomach. Chris licked him again in the same spot before he walked away back toward the trees. 

“Mom was really afraid he was going to be feral,” Stiles said. “She was worried that she should’ve put him with the pack instead of giving him to your family, but she made the right call. He didn’t need more wolves then. He needed people.” 

“Chris would’ve been brilliant in whatever environment he was raised in, but I’m forever grateful that she gave us the chance to have him.” 

“I don’t know,” Stiles said, like he had his reservations about what Peter said. Then he shook his head. “I can’t understand why he’s nervous about hurting you. That wolf is enamored.” 

“It’s powerful.” 

“But something being powerful doesn’t make it dangerous,” Stiles said. “I’m powerful. Do you think I’m dangerous?” 

“Of course you are.” 

Stiles smiled slightly, but his eyes stayed serious. “Okay, but do you think I’m dangerous to you?” 

“At the moment? No.” 

“What about Chris?” 

Peter shook his head, looking at the large dark wolf he’d watch grow since it was smaller than Coriolanus. From the time that neither of them could make it through a full moon without sleeping, more often than not curled up together like they were both pups. He was dangerous. Peter knew that at a soul deep level. He was a dangerous man, but then again, so was he. 

“He’s no more dangerous to me than I am to him,” Peter said. 

Stiles laughed slightly. He sounded frustrated. “Is that the clearest answer I’m going to get?” 

“It’s the most honest one I have.” 

“Fine,” Stiles said. Then his face lit up as Chris came back toward them. Stiles held out his hand. Chris walked within range to let him pet his side.  

“I’m surprised he’ll let you touch him.” 

“It was going to go one way or the other,” Stiles said. “My patron likes wolves. I like wolves. He’s got my mom’s magic on him. I had some things in my favor.” 

“True,” he said. 

Then Chris laid down close enough that Stiles could still pet him. He licked his paws like he wasn’t paying him any attention, but he did the same thing to Talia. Like he was giving them the privilege of touching him and they were beneath his notice. When he was moody, he would treat Derek the same way. 

“Do you want to see Coriolanus?” Peter asked. 

“Yes,” Stiles said. “Bring him here. I’m just going to pet your husband for a few hours.” 

“Dreams do come true for good boys, don’t they Stiles?” Peter asked. 

“He’s got fur,” Stiles said in a voice Peter had only heard him use on animals. “That’s great and it’s pretty fur, but no I’d kinda like to fill him up skin on skin at some point.” 

“It’s adorable that you think I’d allow that,” Peter said. 

“Come on,” Stiles said. “I’d totally let you spit roast me.” 

Peter laughed as he walked back toward the porch. Coriolanus was still asleep on the chair Chris had left him on. Peter scooped him up, his long legs jerking as he came slightly awake. When he saw it was only him, he settled down, his eyes closing again. 

“There’s my buddy!” 

Then his eyes snapped open again as Peter crouched down to put his flailing body on the ground before his nose was broken. Coriolanus ran to Stiles, barreling past Chris in the process to lick and bite Stiles’s hand. Stiles laughed, letting the dog crawl up him, his still puppy sharp nails leaving lines on his skin in the moonlight. 

Chris stood up and looked at Peter before he sneezed. Peter pressed his head against his hip and scratched his ear. 

“He’s gained weight,” Stiles said, smiling at the puppy that was certain it needed to bite his face at least once. “He looks great.” 

“Chris spoils him rotten.” 

“Because he deserves it,” Stiles said, puppy-voicing again. Then Stiles looked at him and smiled. Peter hadn’t been on the receiving end of that particular one yet. It made Stiles look so very young, sweet in a way that Peter knew he really wasn’t. “I’m really glad he has a good home.” 

Peter smiled back, sitting on the grass across from him. “We’re glad he decided to let us have him.” 

Stiles’s smile lingered as he looked down at the puppy before he glanced toward the house. 

“So how is all of that coming?” he asked. 

“It’s a nightmare, but we have a shower now,” Peter said. 

“Woo. Progress,” Stiles said. 

“That almost warranted a party by itself,” Peter said. 

When Stiles just sat there, like he was waiting for Peter to tell him more, Peter did. He started broad, the major colors of the lower floor, then the upper. Then when Stiles actually seemed interested he got more specific, the herringbone floor pattern they planned to use in the foyer with wood-look tiles that could withstand the wear of their boots and paws. The pattern they’d decided on for the backsplash using locally quarried stone. He tried not to sound pretentious when he said it and failed. 

It hadn’t been too terrible long from sunrise when Stiles arrived, but Peter was still surprised to see the sky lightening above the mountains. Like every full moon, he was convinced his eyes were playing tricks on him until the dark velete grew lighter and lighter. 

Finally, Peter yawned, then Stiles did, his jaw popping. Chris and Coriolanus were asleep on the grass beside them. 

“That’s going to look great,” Stiles said. 

“We hope so,” Peter said. 

Then Stiles reached out and slid his hand over Chris’s wide back. Peter almost warned him not to, but Chris didn’t even stir. For a few quiet moments, his hand just moved against his fur and Peter almost felt hypnotized. His eyes burned. He wanted his bed. 

“He would really like a full moon run with a pack,” he said, looking at Peter. “I know you’re on the fence about it, but it would be good for him.” 

“Why?” Peter asked. 

Stiles shrugged slightly. “I don’t know. Didn’t you like talking to me? I guess it’s kind of the same thing for them. It’s just wolf time.” 

Peter nodded. His eyelids felt heavy. “That makes sense.” 

Stiles smiled at him, just the tug at the corner of his mouth. “I could hang out with you while he’s running with the mutts.” 

“And what would we do?” 

“I don’t know? Put you to work harvesting? Just sitting around? I’m sure we’ll figure something out.” 

“I’m sure we could,” Peter said. 

Stiles smiled again then he rolled and pushed himself off the ground. Peter stood with him, making Chris and the dog stir. Stiles petted Coriolanus again before petting Chris. 

“Thanks for letting me come over,” he said to Chris before he looked up and smiled at Peter. “Really. Once in a lifetime opportunity.” 

“For you? Hardly,” Peter said. “Come over any moon you feel inclined.” 

“Don’t make offers you don’t want to keep.” 

“I don’t,” Peter said. “Sometimes the night drags with no one to talk back.” 

Stiles smiled before he leaned in. Peter almost pulled away, but Stiles just kissed his cheek before he pulled away. 

“Get some sleep,” Stiles said. 

“You too.” 

Chris was watching them with bright yellow eyes, but he wasn’t growling. He just stared. Peter petted his head before he nodded at Stiles. Stiles lifted his hand slightly and walked back toward the driveway as Peter went to the back porch with Chris and Coriolanus following.     
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops. Sorry I forgot to put italics on the phone conversations

Peter laid beside Stiles on the bed in the back of his shop. Plants sat on shelves around the top of the room nearly to the ceiling. Stiles’s glowing orbs were piled in a bowl in the far corner. Their colors pulsed low together. There was a wooden bear figurine making a slow circuit. Peter watched as it climbed a low pile of books stacked like stairs. When it reached the top, it raised up on its rear legs and put its front paws on the wall. Peter couldn’t hear its roar, but he could see its open mouth. Last time he had been there, there were wooden horses with horned heads. The time before that a small pack of wolves had ranged Stiles’s possessions. 

“Do you and Chris fuck?”

Stiles was playing with the model of an airplane. His pale body was completely bare against the dark sheets.

“Yes.” 

“Then why do you have sex with me?”

“We only have sex every year or so,” Peter said, watching his eyes. “He’s afraid he’ll kill me if we fuck more. I can’t convince him otherwise so we do this. He feels less guilty for not fucking me. I’m less bitter about not getting to fuck my husband. It isn’t perfect, but it keeps things moving.”

It felt recited. It was, although he had never said the words out loud. He rationalized to himself often though. 

“Does he like sex?”

“He’s terrified of it. I think that tapers the pleasure.”

Stiles frowned at his metal model, spinning one of the propellers. “That’s sad.”

“There’s nothing to be sad about,” Peter said. “Are you sore?”

“I can go again.”

Peter rolled onto his side and Stiles put down his plane, meeting him halfway. 

*** 

Chris could hear the rattle of Peter’s breathing where he slept on the couch in the living room. He turned up the TV enough to drown it out, but low enough that it wouldn’t wake him up. That only lasted a handful of minutes before he turned it back down so he could hear Peter again. His heartbeat was strong, but the stale sweaty scent of his skin overshadowed the lingering fumes of fresh paint. 

He watched the clock for another hour before he got up and pressed his hand to Peter’s forehead. Heat pulsed from his brow. 

Chris took out his phone and pulled up Stiles’s information. He asked Peter for it a few weeks before when Coriolanus had been lethargic and hadn’t eaten in twelve hours. Stiles had brought him two small bottles of liquid and the next morning Coriolanus had been fine. 

He pulled up the conversation again. 

_Peter is sick. He caught something on our hunt._

He sat back in his chair and waited. It seemed like a long time before the screen lit on his leg. 

_Stiles: What’s going on?_

_He has a fever, he’s disoriented, and can’t keep anything down but broth._

_Stiles: How long has it been going on?_

_This will be the fourth night._

_Stiles: Your kitchen is finished right?_

_Yes._

_Stiles: Cool. I’ll just make the remedy there._

_Okay thank you._

_Stiles: Np. See you in a bit._

Chris pushed himself out of his chair and went into the kitchen. It still smelled of new wood and appliances. If he stayed in there too long his head started to hurt. 

He emptied the dishwasher and loaded it again with the pots from making Peter soup earlier. He scrubbed the metal sink of the residue then wiped the counters and stove top. When he finished, it looked new. It looked like no one lived there, because Peter was sick and he hadn’t been able to mess things up, buy things they didn’t need that he claimed were decoration, and would bring everything together, and make it feel lived in. 

He had never wanted Peter to bring random shit home more in his life. 

When the doorbell rang, Chris went down the hall and opened the door. 

“Hey,” Stiles said. 

“Thanks for coming,” Chris said, holding the door open for him. 

Stiles walked in and looked around at the foyer then peaking into the kitchen as he reached the end of the short hall. He looked in and nodded, before looking back at Chris. 

“Was it worth the headache?” 

“I don’t know,” Chris said. 

“It looks nice,” Stiles said. 

Then Chris heard Peter move in the living room. He went passed Stiles in case Peter got dizzy when standing like he had been doing. When he came in the room, Peter was already on his feet, holding onto the couch. His cheeks were flushed, but he looked at Chris and smiled. His eyes were glazed with fever. 

“Hello, gorgeous,” he said. The vomiting had taken its toll. His throat sounded raw. 

“You don’t need to be up,” Chris said. 

“You look like shit,” Stiles said behind him. 

Peter looked at him and smiled. “I didn’t know you were here.” 

“That’s not that surprising. You don’t look like you’re aware of a lot right now.” 

When Peter stepped into Stiles’s space Chris’s vocal cords contracted with a quiet growl. He choked it down before it was audible. Then Peter slid his arms around Stiles’s shoulders and leaned in. Chris expected Stiles to push him away. Peter was sick. He needed a shower and to brush his teeth, but Stiles kissed him back. 

Stiles opened his mouth and Peter pushed his tongue in. Then Chris did growl. It was uncontrollable. He felt his eyes shift as low heat built in his chest and face. Stiles stepped away, reaching into the pocket of his jeans, and pulling out a small glass vial. He unscrewed the top then spit into it before he looked at Chris. 

“Sorry.” 

Chris took Peter’s arm and pushed him back toward the couch. With the amount of cold and flu medicine in his system, he was easy enough to lead. When he was laying down again, Peter pressed his hot hand against Chris’s cheek. 

“You’re so handsome.” 

“Do you want me to kill him?” Chris asked. “Kissing him in front of me is a good way to get him killed.” 

Peter’s drugged smile fell. He put his arms around Chris’s neck before leaning up and pressing against his cheek. 

“I’m sorry. I love you.” 

“I love you too,” Chris said, pulling Peter off him before kissing his forehead. He was hotter than an hour before. 

By the time he straightened, Peter’s eyes were already half closed. Chris ran his fingers through his hair that was clumped together from him sweating, the strands drying, then dampening again with another fever spike. Chris looked around, but Stiles was gone. Then he heard the sink in the kitchen running. 

Chris crossed the hall into the kitchen. The moon was thin, leaving the backyard black through the floor to ceiling windows. Coriolanus had found Stiles. He was crowding around his legs as Stiles filled one of their stainless steel sauce pans with water. 

“I hope you don’t care,” Stiles said. “I’ll just brew the cure here and give it to him fresh.” 

“That’s fine.” 

“He’s out of it, huh?” Stiles asked. 

Chris didn’t respond. He could still feel the hair along the ridge of his back raised. 

“What were you hunting?” Stiles asked, as he turned off the water and moved to the stove. The igniter clicked rapidly before the flame caught. 

“A witch,” Chris said. 

“Did she cut him with something or curse him?” 

“She nicked him with a knife.” 

“That sucks,” Stiles said. “I don’t think it’s anything too bad. He taste sick, but not like it’s anything life threatening.” 

The growl escaped his throat like a sneeze. Coriolanus stilled by Stiles's legs and looked back at Chris. He wagged his tail. His eyes were wide, like he was afraid it was directed at him. 

Chris reached down and Coriolanus came over to rub against his hand. 

“Sorry,” Stiles said, looking down at the flames beneath the pot and adjusting the dial. “It’s an easy way to tell how bad it is and I could get a saliva sample. And by the way, he doesn’t even kiss me like that when we do have sex.” 

“I don’t want to hear about it.” 

The parasite in his nervous system was inflamed. His gums above his canines ached. His eyesight flickered from human to something blurred and hyper-detailed in turn. His sense of smell fluxed. He wanted to go lay down and keep the lights off until it stopped. It made his stomach feel empty and his head feel clouded. 

He sat at the bar and closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose. It helped some, focusing on the pressure of his fingers on his skin, drawing him out of his mind. 

When he opened his eyes again, Stiles was at the island across from him. He already had a knife and a few jars around him holding plants and some holding things that looked slick to the touch.

“Cutting board?” Stiles asked. 

“The cabinet to your left.” 

Stiles bent down and opened cabinets. Chris heard him sorting through things before he pulled out the glass cutting board. Then he opened one of the jars filled with soil and a small plant. He could see its thin white roots against the sides. Stiles snapped off a few leaves and laid them on the board. 

“So fever, nausea, confusion, anything else?” Stiles asked. 

“He had rashes.” 

“Does he still?” 

“No.” 

Stiles nodded before chopping the leaves, then opening another jar and pulling out a small black spiney circle like an urchin. He laid the flat of the blade across it and smashed it like a clove of garlic. 

“How long will this take to work?” 

“If I do it right? A few hours.” 

“Okay.” 

“It’ll take a little while to steep, though.” 

“I’m going to sit with him.” 

“Knock yourself out. I’ll bring it in there when it’s finished.” 

“Thank you,” Chris forced himself to say before going into the living room. 

Peter was watching TV through half-slitted eyelids. When Chris came in he looked at him then leaned up slightly. Chris took the hint and went to the couch, lifting Peter enough that he could sit down before pulling Peter back down against his lap. Peter turned in against him, his forehead against his stomach. Chris kneaded at his shoulders and focused on Peter’s hot breath through his shirt against his stomach.

He couldn’t be around sick people often. It was hard to be around anyone with a limp, even bad eyesight, or poor hearing was dangerous. It stirred things he didn’t like to think about, like how easy it would be to get that person alone, to pull them from their herd, until they were completely vulnerable. 

With Peter, that thought didn’t cross his mind. He wanted him better. The disease was uneasy. It pulled at his emotions like a puppet master. 

Every noise Stiles made in the other room made Chris want to grab the pistol he knew was in the entertainment center. Even when his mind, the person he was, knew that Stiles was there to help. The parasite was so rabidly protective of his mate, his hunting partner, killing wasn’t just an option, but the only viable one. 

It seemed like a small eternity before Stiles came into the living room with a travel mug. He sat on the coffee table near them and handed it to Chris. 

“This should help,” he said. 

Chris touched Peter’s face, rubbing his thumb over the silver hairs at his temple. He was starting to sweat again. Peter stirred some before he looked up at Chris with his dark blue eyes. He wasn’t smiling anymore. His skin was splotched with heat. 

“You need to drink this.” 

“Later. My stomach hurts.” 

“No. Now,” Chris said, picking his upper body slightly until Peter was half across his lap, his back braced against the couch and Chris’s arm. 

Stiles held out the cup and Chris took it before giving it to Peter. Peter drank, wincing at the flavor before coughing. Chris took the cup and Stiles patted Peter’s back hard enough to break up the choking. Chris growled. His hands were full. He couldn’t move and he loathed how close Stiles was. He was trapped and Peter was between them inside of behind him where he should be. 

“Hey,” Stiles said, looking at Chris. His voice was firm. “I’m not going to hurt him. Pull it back.” 

Words were beyond him. His vision wasn’t pulsing anymore, but the room was slightly blurred to anything that wasn’t Stiles. The only thing he could do was lower the volume of his growl and concentrate on being still.

Stiles was as brave and stupid as Chris originally thought. He put the cup back to Peter’s mouth. When Peter pulled away from it, it took everything in Chris to stay seated. It was only the thought that it would make Peter health again. He pressed his face against the bare skin of Peter’s neck closest to him and forced himself to breath as he felt Peter swallowing. He didn’t realize Peter was holding his side until he felt his hot palm. 

When he finally heard Stiles move away, Chris kissed Peter’s throat and pulled away. 

Stiles was putting things into his leather bag. Peter turned back in against him, putting his arm around Chris’s shoulders. Chris squeezed him closer. 

“There’s more of that in the fridge. Heat it on the stove until it’s steaming. He needs to drink it while it’s hot, so no sipping. It doesn’t taste good, so don’t expect him to like it,” Stiles said, putting his bag over his shoulder. 

“There’s money in my wallet on the table. Take whatever you charge,” Chris said. 

“Don’t worry about it.” 

“You came over in the middle of the night to do this. Take the money.” 

“No,” Stiles said. “If he isn’t better by two call me.” 

“If I have to bring John.” 

Stiles snorted, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re not the first werewolf whose house I’ve had to come in to with sick humans.” 

Chris barely nodded before kissing Peter’s hair and rubbing his cheek against him. 

“He’s going to be okay, but don’t wait that long to call me again.” 

Chris nodded. 

“I left some salts on the counter. Put them in a bowl with hot water and get him in the tub when he wakes up. It’ll help break up the congestion in his chest.” 

“Okay,” he said. “Thank you,” he forced out. 

“No problem,” Stiles said. He hated the way Stiles looked at Peter, a moment too long and too concerned. 

Then he left the room. Chris listened to him going down the hall and click of Coriolanus’s toenails as he followed him before the front door closed. The quick click-click of Coriolanus’s toenails as he came back down the hall preceded him coming back into the living room. He laid down beside the couch. Chris tried to watch the TV, feeling his hands still shaking with the scent of a stranger and Peter’s sickness lingering in their home. 

 

 

Less than an hour after Stiles left, Chris watched the shadows being cast on the walls of the bathroom. The water in the bathtub was so hot it was making the entire room warm. Condensation broke and dripped down the large mirror above the vanity. He could hardly see his own silhouette where he sat near the bathtub, making sure Peter’s eyes stayed open. 

A wooden bowl filled with the salt Stiles had left smoldered on the ledge of the bathtub. As soon as Chris had added water, the salts had ignited then steamed. They still glowed red. 

“Is it helping?” Chris asked. 

“I can breath easier,” Peter said. 

Peter smelled better too although he hadn’t washed yet. At least most of his body was beneath the water surface, keeping the stale scent of his skin encased. The new sweat on his brow didn’t smell as diseased. 

His phone vibrated in his pocket. 

He took it out and read the message from Stiles, asking if Peter was any better. 

_Yes. He’s lucid. I’ll let you know if that changes._

He turned his phone on silent and put it back in his pocket. 

“Who was that?” Peter asked. 

“Stiles.” 

Chris was tired. When Peter was sick, he didn’t sleep. With the sound of irregular breathing and a strained heartbeat, being able to feel his body heat when normally all he felt was Peter was a slight coolness, it was too much. He couldn’t settle his mind. Not that he wanted it to. 

“How often have you been seeing him?” Chris asked. 

“I don’t know. Once sometimes twice a week.” 

“I want you to stop.” 

Peter looked at him without lifting his head from the porcelain behind him. “Why?” 

“You’re friendlier than you should be,” Chris said. He made sure his tone was even, that he wasn’t accusing. It was a statement of fact and that’s all he wanted it to be. 

“We aren’t. I like him, but it’s nothing beyond friendly.” 

“You’re friends?”

“Maybe, at least the beginning.” 

“That’s too close, Peter.” 

Peter started to say something then paused for a moment. He looked exhausted, but when Chris could finally sleep, as soon as he got Peter out of the bathtub and settled in bed, he wanted to be able to sleep hard without worry. 

“I think you’re jumping to conclusions,” Peter said. 

“I don’t think I am,” Chris said. “You were never supposed to be friends with these people. He obviously thinks that you are.” 

Peter’s lips thinned slightly as he closed his eyes and took another deep breath. “Okay.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t be. You’re right.” 

“I can be sorry and still be right.” 

Peter huffed something that might have been a laugh. Chris got up and took a towel from beneath the sink. Peter sat up and started to half-heartedly scrub at his skin with a rag. Chris took it from him and got on his knees beside the tub. He rubbed the layered sweat off his back with Peter leaning into his hand on his chest. 

His heart sounded better. His breathing wasn’t rattling. Chris rubbed the tattooed skin of his chest and breathed in the scent of Peter’s sickness finally falling away. 

 

*** 

 

Through the windows above the sink, Peter watched Chris using a chainsaw on a large tree they had cut down while the construction was happening. Half of its bare branches still reached toward the sky even while on its side. He could see he fine powder of sawdust spraying the air. 

Down the hall, the front door opened. He heard Talia’s shoes on the tiles in the foyer and short hall before she stopped at the mouth of the kitchen. She was quiet for a moment, long enough to draw Peter’s eyes away from the window to where she stood, looking around at the new floors, cabinets, and counters. It didn’t even hint at the small galley style it had been before. 

“This is beautiful,” she said. 

“Thank you,” Peter said, glancing back of the window again before making himself go to the bar. 

“You look better than you did,” Talia said. 

Peter faintly remembered going to Talia and his mom’s house when they came back into town from their hunt. He had been so ready to get home and go to bed. At first it felt like possible exhaustion. Every inch of his body felt like it was laden with concrete. Then the moss green vomit had started, the rashes, and delirium. He still only had traces of memories from the three days Chris had monitored him before calling Stiles. 

“Stiles came and brewed a cure the other night.” 

“How cute. Your boyfriend cares,” Talia said, going to the cabinets and looking through them before coming up with a coffee cup. She went to the press and helped herself. 

“He isn’t my boyfriend.” 

“He’s a friend that you have sex with, boy-friend.” 

“He is a shop keeper that I do business with and occasionally fuck.” 

“A shopkeeper who came over to make you cold medicine.” 

Peter stared at her and she smiled before going to their fridge and going through his creamers. She sniffed a few before finally taking one with mint. He would never admit that he hated mint and Chris never used creamer. 

After she finished, Talia pushed herself onto the counter beside the sink. She looked over her shoulder, out the window. 

“What is he doing?” 

“That seems self evident.” 

“It isn’t pretty to be a smart ass, Peter,” she said. “Why aren’t you helping him?” 

“Because he wanted to be with nature. Who am I to deny him?” 

The truth was that Chris had been pacing. First in their bedroom to the bathroom, from his closet, to the dresser, to the sink, to the bed, and back to the closet. Then he had moved from the office to the bedroom while Peter was still trying to sleep, open the door, close the door, open the door, Coriolanus jumped on the bed, then off the bed as he followed Chris out of the room once again. 

It hadn’t stopped until Peter had finally given up on sleeping although he’d only come to bed five hours before. Being a hunter didn’t lend itself to a normal sleep schedule. Neither did being married to a werewolf. Mix the two together and he slept when he could. 

“He’s nixed Stiles, so I need to deal with that soon,” Peter said. 

“That doesn’t surprise me.” 

“Talia,” he said, his voice flat. 

“He doesn’t even like construction workers in the house, but you have sex with other people.” 

“This isn’t up for discussion.” 

“You got involved with him. It wasn’t like you didn’t know nearly everything about him when you did.” 

“He knew the same things about me,” Peter said to her for what felt like the hundredth time. “It works for us. That’s the end of it.” 

Talia rolled her eyes as she took a sip of her coffee. “Is he happy with the remodel?” 

Peter knew an out when he saw one. He nodded as he drank from his own coffee. “He’ll like it more once we’ve been in it longer. Everything smells new right now.” 

“Poor little brother,” Talia said. 

A small part of him was still mildly repulsed when she referred to Chris that way. Not that she didn’t have every right to. He was as much her brother as she was his mom’s son, but still, it was strange when the concept of Chris being his brother was never in the cards for him. Chris was Chris. The love of his life, but never his brother. 

“You should bring Mom to dinner. We’ll make something. Maybe having family scents would help.” 

“That would be good for her. She’s been wanting to see it,” Talia said. “Keep the sodium low. Her doctor said she needed to start limiting her intake.” 

“Did he have anything else to say?” Peter asked. 

He listened to Talia give a brief summary of their mother’s health. It wasn’t the best, but for a woman who was nearly seventy-eight, it wasn’t the worst he’d ever heard. For a woman her age with the onset of dementia, it was wonderful. 

Still his eyes were drawn back to the window where he could see Chris working time and again through the afternoon. 

 

 

Peter sent one word texts to Stiles’s invites to his shop over the next week before he began to not respond at all. That only lasted two days before he finally found himself parking along the ditch that had become all too familiar. 

Only the screen door was closed as Peter walked up the porch. Stiles was sitting in the large chair behind the desk with a book spread on his crossed legs. When he looked up, he barely smiled. 

“Did he finally loosen your leash?” 

“Don’t talk about him that way,” Peter said, coming to the desk and leaning on it. “But I assume you know this isn’t going to work anymore.” 

“Yeah I kind of figured the night I brewed the cure for your witch poison.” 

“He’s never known any of the people I sleep with. He’s never seen me with them.” 

Stiles shrugged before looking up. “I get it. I’m not mad he wants us to stop. That’s fine. It’s what a dick he was about it.” 

Peter huffed a small laugh. “He has two settings, easy and ice queen.” 

“Apparently.” 

“I’m sorry if he was rude.” 

“He wasn’t really rude, he just assumed a lot of shit. Like that he has anything to be jealous of.” 

“You’re half his age and enjoy sex. Is it really that hard to understand?” 

Stiles stared down at the pages of the book before he shrugged. “It’s hard to understand, but people can be stupid, so I guess I have to take that into account too.” 

“It helps,” Peter said, smiling slightly. 

When Stiles met his eyes, he was smiling too. It tugged at something in his chest. He did enjoy that smile. Maybe more than he should. But then Chris had so many mannerisms that he enjoyed, was it the end of the world if Stiles offered three or four others? 

“I had a nice time with you.” 

“I’m sure you say that to all the guys.” 

“It would be rude if I didn’t,” Peter said, “But this time I mean it.” 

Stiles huffed a laugh. “Yeah okay. I’m sure I’ll see you around. That dog eats like nobody’s business.” 

“I don’t plan on switching contacts for our hunting supplies either.” 

“Cool,” Stiles said, looking back down at his book. “See you later.” 

“Until next time,” Peter said, pushing off the desk and going back through the screen door. 

Somehow the squeal of the spring had become more common to his ears than it should be. The smell of the slightly stale water gathered in the ditch beside the road, and the scent of fresh mud on the road. Peter inhaled deeply in the clearing that housed The Haven and stared at the trees that ringed around it, the shadow of mountains behind them looming in the fog. 

 

*** 

The sun was still pale and gray through the wall of windows in the kitchen as Chris opened the canister that held Coriolanus’s food. He used the metal scoop on the counter with blurry eyes and reached inside. When the metal struck the plastic bottom, he looked inside. 

Chris dumped what remained into Coriolanus’s bowl. Then he went to the coffee maker and started it with the blend of coffee Peter had bought for him. He needed to buy more of that too. 

While he waited for it to brew, he took his phone from his sleep pants and searched for a store that sold the food Coriolanus needed on his maps. The nearest, aside from The Haven, was over two hours away.

When enough coffee and been spit out, Chris poured himself a cup as the dispenser continued to drip on the hotplate beneath, hissing in the quiet kitchen. By the time Chris put the pot back the scent of burned coffee had filled his nose. 

 

A cold front had come through while they slept. Ice was on the windows of the SUV as he went out to it. By the time he reached the coffee shop it had mostly burned away, but the edges of his windows were still starred with frost. 

After he found the ones they liked, he stood in the short line and looked out the windows. The fog was so thick, the large panes of glass looked white. Chris tried to see through it as he waited to pay, but he could barely make out the shape of the dam. 

The parking lot was empty as Chris walked out. He paused at his car door before crossing the narrow parking lot to where the pavement ended. 

Only a few of the dam gates were open, allowing water to crash to the river below in a man made waterfall. He remembered when he was twelve or thirteen, when his and Peter’s dad had brought them out. They had stood in nearly the same place before the shops behind him were even a thought in some investor’s head. 

They had watched with fifty or sixty other people. It had been nearly silent before Chris heard the groan. For a horrifying moment, he’d thought the dam was breaking as the noise had grown from quiet creaking to a grating so loud in his hypersensitive ears he had almost covered them. 

Then a large piece of ice had broken over the top of the dam, pushed over by torrential rains and runoff from farther up the mountain. He had watched as giant pieces continued to break and fall over the edge, crashing to the dark water below and splashing water so high he felt it on his cheeks. 

Now he watched the water running dark, but calm downstream. 

Finally, he turned around and went back to the SUV. He didn’t let himself think too much as he drove the few miles to the turn off for The Haven. He had to put the SUV into four wheel drive at certain points as the mud sucked at his tires and tried to pull them off the path. It was slow going, but he didn’t mind as much with the fog coming through the trees and steam still rising from the road. 

When he finally pulled up in front of The Haven he could only see the shape of the building in the fog. He got out and slipped slightly in the mud, steadying himself on the SUV’s side. The flame in front of Stiles’s shop still flickered as Chris went up the steps. He almost knocked, but thought better. Stiles most likely already knew he was there anyway. 

Stiles was standing behind his register with an array of ingredients laid out on a white cloth. When he looked up, there wasn’t an ounce of surprise on his face. 

“Back shelf, red pack,” Stiles said. 

Chris went where he said, to the back shelf in front of the counter where the pet foods were. It was normally in an orange bag, but as he read the front everything else was the same, lamb, rice, and a few ingredients Chris wasn’t sure how to pronounce or where they came from. 

He took it to the counter and took out his wallet, giving Stiles his card. Stiles ran it without telling him the total. He wouldn’t be surprised if he gouged the price. He wouldn’t blame him. As he waited for the charge to clear, he looked at the ingredients laid on the cloth. There were small bones, a few kinds of dried flowers, and what looked like the top half of a frog with its entrails spotting the cloth with blood. 

His concentration was broken as Stiles held his card. Chris took it and put it back in his wallet. 

“I’m sorry,” Chris said, looking up from folding his wallet at Stiles and waiting until he met his eyes. “For how I handled things. But with how Peter’s been upset, I don’t think I was wrong to ask for it to end. I didn’t want to hurt either of you, but if he’d been going by our agreement, neither one of you would’ve been.” 

“He’s not allowed to get along with the people he screws?” 

“He’s allowed to fuck them, Stiles. Nothing emotional. Not at all. Not friends. Sex and that’s it.” 

Stiles started to say something then shook his head. Tearing the receipt from the printer and putting it in front of Chris to sign. Chris did and slid it back toward him. 

“Whatever works for you guys.” 

Chris picked up the bag of food and went to leave. He was almost to the door when a bell rang. He looked back and Stiles was playing with a brass bell beside his register, running his index finger of the button. 

Then he looked at Chris. 

“You and Peter aren’t going anywhere, right?” Stiles asked. When Chris shook his head Stiles nodded. “I didn’t think so, so I don’t want there to be any hard feelings. So in the spirit of getting the fuck of it, I have a harvest I need help with. My truck has hard time going where I need to go and with the condition the county roads are in Dad needs his truck for work, so could you help me out?” 

“What do you need to harvest?” Chris asked. 

“Mushrooms. They only grow on 119 Rd.” 

Chris paused for a moment before he nodded. “Okay.” 

“Can you meet me at the gas station out there around five tomorrow evening?” 

“Sure,” Chris said. 

“Wear comfortable shoes.” 

“Okay,” Chris said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

“See ya.” 

Chris pulled the front door closed behind him. The warmth of the shop was torn away as the breeze came cold and cutting from the north. His cheeks were already tinging by the time he reached the SUV and climbed inside. 

 

 

Chris was waiting at the small gas station north of town the next evening. He parked at the edge of the lot, near an air tank with an Out of Order sign hung from the hose. It was older than him. One of his few memories was of his father filling the tires of his truck before going on a hunt. He’d taken Chris to the gas station with him just because he had asked. 

They had lived somewhere near here, one of the numbered roads with no name. He couldn’t still find it, but he remembered the steep hill and the gravel, the way the car would slide down it if his mom pushed on the brakes of their station wagon too hard. Sometimes she did it just to make them laugh. 

Chris swallowed and looked away from the harsh yellow of the gas station canopy. He hated this station and he hated this area of of town. 

A light blue small SUV caught his eye as it pulled into the lot and parked for to the side. He didn’t know why he expected Stiles to get out of it, but he wasn’t surprised when he did. He watched as he pulled a backpack onto his shoulder and juggled two cups of coffee as he crossed the lot and pulled open Chris’s passenger side door. 

“Hey,” Stiles said as he climbed into the passenger side. 

“Good evening,” Chris said. 

Stiles held his second coffee out. 

“Thanks,” Chris said. 

“No problem,” he said, as he put his in the coffee holder and shrugged off his backpack into the floorboard. “So if you want to pull out of here, take a right and you’ll go down about five miles until we reach 119. Take a right.” 

Chris put the SUV into drive and did as Stiles told him. When the quiet of the cabin tickled at the nape of his neck, he turned up the radio. The roads were steaming with condensation as he drove, but at least some of the fog had cleared. Stiles was silent until Chris turned onto the road he specified. 

“It’s about seven miles down here. I’ll tell you when to stop.” 

Chris nodded and kept driving. 

He expected the road to be dirt, but it wasn’t. It was weathered asphalt, but it was still drivable. He kept that to himself as they passed hilled acreage with livestock spaced in the valleys. He wondered if they had trouble with the wolves. His own was more interested in the lambs in the fields than he cared for. 

“Up here, where the road T’s, take the left.” 

“Okay.” 

Then asphalt ran out. His tires clanked dully and his suspension creaked at the potholes and ruts driven deep into the mud. He slowed the SUV to a stop and put it into four wheel drive before he went any farther. 

There were points that it looked like the trail, it couldn’t be called a road, went through private property, fields, and densely wooded acres. Limbs and vines dragged down the sides of the SUV, adding to the scars from his and Peter’s hunts. 

“Okay, you can stop,” Stiles said. 

Chris pulled to the side of the trail as much as he could without getting stuck. Not that he thought anyone else would be out this way, but it was best to be safe. Stiles grabbed a backpack from the floorboard and pulled it on. Chris checked his pistol at his hip before closing and locking the doors. The beep of the alarm didn’t sound right among the trees that surrounded them. They looked a thousand years old and untouched. This far into the hills, it wouldn’t surprise him at all if they were. 

“That thing can go a lot farther than my truck can,” Stiles said. “So we’ll only be walking a little bit.” 

“Okay,” Chris said. 

He expected Stiles to start talking, but he was silent as they walked, only the sound of his footsteps and breathing clear on the wet stones and grass. Occasionally, he warned Chris about a low tangle of thorns or holes on the path, but that was it. Chris couldn’t think of anything off the top of his head to contribute, so he let it rest. 

As they walked, the trees became more dense, the underbrush became more tangled, because it wasn’t burned in the spring like the lower lands. Stickers and thorns snagged at his jeans. He was poked a few times pulling strands of thorns off. The scent of his own blood was metallic beneath the scent of greener and sap. He could smell rabbits and coyotes at certain points. There was even the faint hint of an elk. 

Then all those smells ended. It took Chris a moment to realize, then he looked around them. There weren’t any birds calling either. Stiles was a few hundred yards in front of him. Chris didn’t like being behind him. Stiles was bleeding too. He could smell it the moment the first scratches from thorns had happened. He left a trail like a wounded deer on the undergrowth. 

He didn’t realize he was silencing his own footsteps until he was behind Stiles, where he had stopped just beyond the treeline and in a wide clearing. The vines snapped like brittle wire under his hands as he stepped out into the tall brown weeds. 

The clearing was surrounded by trees hundreds of feet tall, leafless, and many of them split. Silver covered the ground, leaving barely any room to see the dead grass it grew with. Chris’s heart began to pound. 

The very center of the clearing was black and muddy. 

Sweat broke over his skin. He didn’t know if it was being surrounded by silver wolf’s bane or knowing with a soul certainty that he had been there before. 

“It’s the only place in the range where silver wolf’s bane gross,” Stiles said. “It didn’t grow here before your blood got into the ground.” 

He wondered if the chain was still staked to the ground less than thirty feet in front of him. If the silver leafed ground covering wouldn’t burn the skin from his hands, he dig for it. 

“Did you notice when everything started to be dead?” Stiles asked. 

“No,” Chris forced himself to say around his dry throat. 

“It’s almost a quarter of a mile from here. A quarter mile in any direction there’s not a living thing aside from this bane, because of the energy Mom drew to bring you back to life.” 

“I wasn’t dead.” 

Stiles laughed slightly. “Yeah you were. You were more dead than Gerard when she found you. He would’ve lived. She took everything from him and put it in you. She used everything else, including the wolf that attacked you,” he said, gesturing to all the dead trees, “to wake the rest of you back up, to get your organs back in the right places, and start the scars.

“I didn’t bring you here to be an asshole,” Stiles said, “But man, you’ve got to get your shit together. I get it. That wolf in you is first generation. It doesn’t know how to be werewolf any more than you do. But you won’t even let it set its anchor on Peter. That’s how afraid you are of it.” 

“I’m anchored to Peter. I have been since I was ten.” 

“No you aren’t, but how are you supposed to know that when you don’t spend any time around wolves?” 

Chris felt the small involuntary growl. The disease didn’t like what he implied. It was anchored on Peter. Peter was his. He had always been and would always be. The implication that he wasn’t made his blood heat. 

“Yeah you feel that, don’t you?” Stiles asked. “You wouldn’t be feeling that if you were anchored to him. You’d just know it. No amount of anchoring tattoos in the world can strengthen that bond if you haven’t done your part.” 

“Stiles,” he warned. 

His voice was rougher, but Stiles was hardly more than a boy. He didn’t want to hurt him. He didn’t think he did. The way his thoughts leached into each other made it so hard to tell. He took a few steps back. When wolfs’ bane brushed beneath the cuff of his jeans and touched his ankle, he didn’t pull away as it started to sear his flesh. 

“I’m not trying to challenge you,” Stiles said. “Chris, I do not want him.” he said, making each word clear. “Peter is a great. He’s a sarcastic, smartass, dick, and yeah under normal circumstances, I might be into that as more than a fuck, but I get you and I get what’s happening to you. The problem? You don’t. 

“You think it’s normal for for forty something year old werewolf to not be able to have workers in your house? To nearly kill me for giving him medication? To not even be able to fuck your own husband whenever you want?

“It isn’t healthy,” Stiles said, “You aren’t healthy. You’re dangerous and it’s not even for the fucked up stupid reason that you think. That wolf? I’m sure it’s mean as fuck when it has a reason to be, but guess what? It’s not any meaner than you are. 

“Because I’ve got news for you, you’d want to kill people over Peter being hurt with or without a wolf. That’s just the kind of person you are. You get scared and you get violent. That has so much less to do with you being a wolf than you want to admit.”

“This is none of your business, Stiles,” Chris said. 

“It is, because that’s my magic that did it. And it’s unbalanced now. I can’t let that happen and not say anything.” 

“Do you feel better? Now that you’ve done your good deed?” Chris asked. 

Stiles’s lips tightened into a thin line, but otherwise he stayed silent. He had never looked so young to Chris. Even with his blood pounding in his ears, he didn’t see it as a weakness to exploit. 

“I didn’t ask for help then and I don’t want it now,” he said. “I am what I am and I will not put the people I love in jeopardy for a romanticized notion of what anyone thinks I should be.” 

“I don’t think you can be stable, Chris,” Stiles said with his jaw tense. “I know it.” 

“I appreciate the vode of confidence,” he said. “But if you ever mention a word of this to Peter, you will be answering to me.” 

“Maybe that’s a risk I’m willing to take.” 

“I would be sure before you step into something that has nothing to do with you,” Chris said. 

He stepped back and left the clearing. His mind felt jumbled. His sense of smell was so much sharper than it should be. His eyesight was blurred at the edges. Sometimes it felt how people described the onset of a stroke. His fingertips started to tingle. The blood in his brain felt like it was too much, pulsing, and making his heart jerk and feel like it was touching his sternum as it raced. 

 

*** 

It was still dark when Peter woke up. The moon was bright for not being full. It shone in, throwing the shadow of the window frames on the wood floors. Peter started to roll over again before looking behind him. Chris and the dog were gone. 

For a moment, he considered going back to sleep. It wasn’t strange for Coriolanus to need to go outside or for Chris to go and watch TV to try and settle his mind near a full moon, but something pushed him up. 

He left their bedroom and went down the hall to the stairs. The TV was off in the living room. The nightlight in the foyer was still on, but that was the only illumination as Peter went into the kitchen. 

Coriolanus was by the back door near Chris’s clothes on the floor. 

Peter nearly walked by the piece of paper on the island, but the paleness caught his eyes. He turned on the light above the sink and forced his tired eyes to focus on Chris’s tight small script. 

_I went for a run. I’ll be home in the morning._

Peter laid the note back down and went to where Coriolanus was. He crouched and petted his back until some of his eyes opened. Peter could see that he wasn’t the person Coriolanus had been waiting for, but he still let his tail thump the floor a few times before he got up and followed Peter back to the bedroom. 

Sleep didn’t come as easily as Peter laid in bed and tried not to listen for howls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to anyone who is a pretty regular reader of my stuff, THIS IS WHY I HAVEN'T POSTED SHIT IN LIKE THREE MONTHS. THIS THING. GAWD. I am so happy to finally be posting. I have one more chapter to go and I swear to god it'll be within the month.


	5. Chapter 5

Chris’s hand slipped on the knob of the back door as he came through it just after dawn. The dew on his feet chilled him when they hit the cool kitchen floor. Peter was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee between his hands. Chris’s skin was pebbled with gooseflesh as he pulled on his clothes from the floor.

“Where did you go?” Peter asked.

“For a run,” Chris said, buttoning his jeans over his bare skin before going toward the stairs.

“Stop. I’ve been up for hours waiting on you.”

“I left a note.”

“Which wasn’t comforting since you never run when the moon isn’t full,” Peter said.

Chris’s bones still ached from the shift. He brushed his muddy hands on his jeans before he turned to Peter, who had stood. There were dark places beneath his eyes. He looked as tired as Chris felt.

“What’s wrong?” Peter asked.

Chris thought of saying nothing was wrong. He was getting tense as the full moon came closer again. That was the backbone of this, he knew it, but the full moon also rubbed his filters raw.

“What did you tell him about me?”

“Who?” Peter asked, confused. Then the crease between his eyes deepened. “Stiles? What do you mean, what did I tell him?”

“He took me to where I was attacked yesterday,” Chris said, watching Peter’s face for the slightest shift, listening to his heart. He heard it hitch.

“Why?”

“He doesn’t think you’re my anchor. Why would he think that?”

“I have no fucking idea,” Peter said. “You think I said that to him?”

“Why else would he think it?”

Peter laughed. It was a sharp humorless noise against the stone counters.

“Oh yes, because I had to have said something. You don’t think it has anything to do with the fact that you don’t fuck me, we’re covered in anchoring tattoos, and you still need some kind of sedative if we have workers in our house? You’re right. Him being suspicious has to be my fault.”

Chris snarled, his teeth dropping, and his eyes shifting before he could think to stop it as heat surged up his spine. It felt foreign and sharp in his throat. He could feel every blood vein in his arms for a moment as the parasitic heat flowed through him. His heart pounded.

“What part of this seems safe to you?” he asked, his voice ringing against the high ceilings. “How am I supposed to let my guard down when this is what it’s keeping back?”

“I don’t fucking care what it’s keeping back, Chris! Do you think I’m afraid of you? What do I have to do? What the fuck do I have to do to show you I am not afraid of you?”

He could smell Peter’s rage. It had shot past anger to something so hot and caustic it burned his throat. A low growl built in the bloated silence.

“Just because you aren’t doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be,” Chris said.

Peter rubbed his hand down his face after a moment, his exhale making his chest deflate.

“For such an intelligent man, you can be so fucking stupid,” Peter said.

Then Peter brushed past him going toward the hallway. Instead of turning toward the stairs, he went toward the front door. Chris heard his keys jingle against the bowl on the foyer table before the front door opened.

“Don’t worry, I’m just going for a run,” Peter said just before the door closed.

Chris heard the SUV’s engine roll over then it backing out of their driveway. Chris stood in the kitchen for a long time, listening to his own breathing in the silence of their house. Finally, he climbed the stairs and went to the bedroom. Coriolanus crawled out from beneath the bed. It was becoming harder for him. Soon he wouldn’t fit any longer.

When Chris laid down, Coriolanus jumped on the bed beside him. After licking his face a few times, the dog went to sleep and Chris listened to his steady heartbeat and breathing. In the absence of Peter’s, Chris’s sleep was long in coming and thin when it settled.

 

As Peter walked across the rock pavers to the front porch of the Haven, the light still flickered in the lantern by the door. It was flickering between blue and purple as Peter pulled open the screen then opened the door. One of the dragons in the enclosures on Stiles’s desk was scrapping its scales against the sides of the case. It rasped in the silence.

Then he heard the quiet pad of bare feet before Stiles came from the back, wearing only sleep pants.

“Hey,” he said.

Peter nodded.

After a few moments, Stiles came closer. Peter tried to speak, but he had no idea what he was supposed to say. He had spent the last thirty years of his life with someone who wouldn’t give him something he had earned. His skin felt heavy. It felt like a bullet hole was where his chest should be.

“Are you okay?” Stiles asked, close enough to touch his shoulder.

“No.”

“I didn’t mean to-,” Stiles said.

“I deserved to know,” Peter said. “I knew anyway, I just tried to ignore it.”

“He does love you. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t.”

“Does he?” Peter asked, looking at Stiles in the darkness of the shop. “Can you love someone without trusting them?”

Stiles’s lips thinned before he slid his hand up Peter’s shoulder to his neck, pulling him into a hug. Peter slid his arms around him and pressed his face against Stiles’s bare skin. Stiles squeezed him.

“You can come get a few hours of sleep,” he said.

Peter nodded with only a faint thought that he shouldn’t, because it might upset Chris. Him being here would upset Chris. He couldn’t bring himself to care in the slightest as he followed Stiles through his shop and into the back rooms. He followed him through the narrow hallways until reaching Stiles’s bedroom. Stiles climbed onto his normal side and Peter went around the bed, pushing off his shoes and laying down.

His chest was aching. Tears felt imminent, like becoming horizontal was laying down his guard. He rolled on his side, but it didn’t help.

“Can you make me sleep?” Peter asked. “My mind won’t stop.”

The bed creaked, then Stiles’s hand was against the side of his throat. Peter exhaled. He could smell Stiles on the sheets as he filled his lungs again. Stiles leaned close enough that he could feel the warmth of his breath against his ear as he spoke words he didn’t understand, but they made his skin tingle. He thought of what Chris had said, like standing in the easement of power lines. That’s what Stiles was.

Then he was dreaming. He was a boy and Chris was a lump of heat and softness against his chest as they laid in the hammock behind their parents’ house with the full moon painting the yard in tones of white and blue.

 

 

As he laid in bed, Chris kept listening for the door to open even when he knew it wouldn’t. He could count the times one of them had left when they were arguing. He could remember each and every time. It happened so rarely.

Every time he opened his eyes he looked at his phone on the bedside table, waiting a few moments to make sure the light at the top wasn’t blinking before he closed his eyes again. He only slept for pieces of time before he jerked awake, thinking he heard the door downstairs. He waited and listened, but the house remained silent.

After less than two hours, he pushed himself up and took his phone. He almost sent a message to Peter, but Peter was being clear enough. Instead, he sent one to Talia.

_If you see Peter, let me know._

After he dressed again, he put his phone back in his pocket and went downstairs. He straightened the house with Coriolanus clicking after him around the lower floor for almost an hour before the dog gave up and went to lay in his bed in the living room.

As soon as all of the clothes were either in the washer or hung, the dishes put away, the living room neat, he stood in the middle of their house and his mind started to chase itself. He could see Peter in his mind’s eye, washed out in the gray light hours before, his face twisted in the kind of anger Chris rarely saw in him. A low growl crept from his throat. It sounded pathetic in the silence.

Then his phone buzzed against his thigh with a message from Talia.

_He just got here._

Chris sent her a thank you and tried not to count how many hours it had been since they fought. If Peter hadn’t been at Talia’s then he knew where else he had been. A new pressure settled over his chest with the rest.

Chris checked Coriolanus’s food and water bowl, before he found his keys and left the house. At the end of the driveway, he didn’t know if he should turn toward town and the police station or toward the Haven. In the end, he decided it was the weekend. He turned toward the Haven. He went down the long narrow road until it came to the clearing where Stiles’s shop was to one side with a thin line of smoke leaving the chimney toward the gray sky. There were fresh deep tire tracks in the mud by the ditch. Chris’s chest throbbed, but he ignored it and drove to the end of the road before he turned up John’s driveway.

He went slowly, giving whoever was at the pack home time to know he was coming onto their property. When the driveway ended in a graveled circle, John was standing on the porch in a t-shirt and jeans, barefoot.

Chris climbed out of the SUV and looked around them, at the tall, tangled mat of trees. The scent of pine was nearly overwhelming.

“This is a surprise,” John said.

“I should’ve called,” Chris said.

“You don’t need to call. You’re just lucky you caught me at home,” John said. “What can I do for you?”

Chris started to open his mouth still standing beside the truck before going closer to John. John didn’t tense in the slightest. He had a kindness in his eyes that Stiles had when he was taking care of his animals.

“Come up and take a seat,” John said.

Chris went up the steps to the large house with the wide wrap-around porch. John sat in one of the rocking chairs facing the driveway and Chris sat in another. Something crinkled then he watched John reach into his jeans pocket and pull out a paper pack. He took a rolled cigarette from it and a lighter. The smoke smelled like soil and salt water. When John saw him watching, he pulled the cigarette away and blew smoke the other way.

“The boy makes them to curb the PMS.”

“PMS?”

“The Pre-Moon Shit.”

Chris laughed slightly despite himself. John smiled.

“So what brings you here?” he asked.

Chris stared at the weather-stained railing in front of him and tried to find where to start. The parasite tapped at the back of his skull, tiny blows on his consciousness.

“Have you talked to Stiles?” Chris asked.

“I talk to him a few times a day,” John said. “Why?”

“Did he tell you that we went to where I was attacked?”

John shook his head as he took another drag from his cigarette.

“Why did he do that? Did you want to go?”

“I didn’t know where we were going. He-,” Chris said, then cleared his throat. “He doesn’t think I’m anchored to Peter.”

John shrugged slightly, looking down at the clay ashtray before he tapped the embers on it. “You’re not,” he said, looking up to meet his eyes.

“How do you know?”

“I just do,” John said. “I knew it from the second I saw you in the library.”

Chris’s gums were throbbing. The itch that been persistent was digging deeper. He stretched his jaw.

“Just let them out. I don’t care,” John said.

His teeth shifted like they were waiting for the command from this man he barely knew.

“What I’d like to know, though, is why you smell like a barrel of despair?”

“Because I am anchored on him. If I’m not anchored to him then I’m not anchored to anything,” Chris said.

“So you can do everything with Peter that married people do? You trust it with him? You aren’t constantly trying to keep it under control?”

Chris didn’t look at him. The weathered wood was safer.

The chair beside him creaked then he heard John exhale.

“If you’re anchored to someone, they’re where you let the wolf come out as often as it wants. They’re your safe zone. I don’t doubt that Peter is who you trust and love most, but it isn’t the same thing.”

Chris clenched his jaw.

“When I heard about how well you two were doing, I thought you had to have put your anchor on him. That’s the only thing that made sense. When I felt that you hadn’t when I saw you again, I don’t know, I thought you two had figured out another system. I didn’t consider that you just didn’t know.”

“I’ve never tried to hurt him,” Chris said. “I’ve never wanted to hurt him.”

John shook his head. “God,” he said squeezing the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry.”

Chris stared at him. He didn’t know if John was talking to him or praying or speaking to nothing. The hair on the back of his neck was starting to raise. John’s heart was beating slightly faster.

Then he looked at Chris before giving another weak shrug. “I’m sorry. I was supposed to be the one to teach you these things. What’s happening with you and Peter isn’t rare, especially for wolves that were bitten against their will. How were you supposed to know how to set an anchor? You were just a pup.”

John clearly wasn’t asking him, so Chris sat as still as he could, slowly starting to squeeze his thigh.

“When Claudia died,” John took a deep breath like just saying her name hurt. “She cared so much about you. She had plans that we were going to set in motion when you got a little older, and then she died and I let that fall through the cracks and I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be-.”

“Yes, I do,” John said. “I had fooled myself into thinking that the Hales were hunters so they’d know about wolves, at least enough to make you comfortable in your own skin and I assumed wrong. Humans can’t teach wolves how to be wolves. That’s another wolf’s role. It was my responsibility and I didn’t do it.

“But just let me make something perfectly clear, just because you aren’t anchored doesn’t mean that you don’t love him. It doesn’t mean your wolf doesn’t love him unconditionally. All it means is that you’re afraid to let your wolf, something foreign to you, have as intimate of a relationship with Peter as your logical human mind does.”

“I have every right to be afraid of it,” Chris said. “It hunts people. I was nearly killed by one. I know what it can do. I can’t ignore that.”

“Then don’t ignore it,” John said. “I’m not asking you to ignore anything. I want you to examine everything you know about your wolf, when does it stalk people, when does it hunt them?”

Chris forced himself to exhale as he felt his mind trying to shut down. If he said nothing and ended this conversation, he and Peter would be in the same place they’d been this morning. Peter would end up in the same place he’d gone before and he would only have himself to blame.

“It can do it to anyone, but its triggered by sick or injured people,” he said.

“Have you seen Peter sick or injured?”

Chris stared at him for a moment before he turned away. He could feel his lip twitching. The parasite was just beneath his skin. It didn’t want out, but it was flaring.

“He’s a human, so I’m going to guess you have seen him sick. You’re hunters so I’m going also guess that you’ve seen him injured. How did it act?”

Chris stared at the railing in front of him and tried to keep his breathing even. He managed, but his pulse was still fast.

“Come on, Chris,” John said. It was the kind of voice that got hundreds if not thousands of confessions, kind and nice, like he was on his side.

Chris shook his head. “We were hunting a grear and before I killed it, it caught Peter up the middle with its claws. His intestines were coming out. I could see his pulse in his organs. I-,” he said. “I could feel the wolf scratching at my brain, trying to get control. It felt like I was having a stroke as I was helping Peter hold his insides in while we waited for help. I was trying to keep the wolf back. I didn’t know what it wanted, but it was rabid and it took over to blocks of time.”

“It didn’t bite him?”

“No,” Chris said.

“And his blood was everywhere?”

“Yes,” Chris said.

He remembered how Peter’s blood had felt on his fingers. The metallic scent of arterial blood was sweltering, smothering his senses. When his consciousness shifted, all he remembered on coming back was holding Peter closer, half-leaned over him like it was trying to cover him from anything. When the healer reached them, he had to fight for every piece of consciousness as the women touched Peter’s stomach. He couldn’t move from where he held Peter, so he just moved his hands up and held Peter’s hands against his chest, kissing his face, terrified that every breath Peter took was going to be the last.

“If you were ever going to kill him that’s when it would’ve happened,” Johns said. “You have to start realizing that just because the wolf is beating down the door in your mind doesn’t mean it wants to do harm, especially when it comes to Peter.”

“It feels dangerous.”

“Because it is dangerous,” John said. “The wolf is dangerous. We have to have control in so many areas of our lives. With our anchor though, we can let it go. If you’d been held captive for weeks at a time, even if it was Peter opening the door, you’d still be beating against it. Excitement doesn’t equal predation. Frustration doesn’t equal predation either, but your wolf is frustrated. If you aren’t allowing it to interact with its mate except when you have no choice… I don’t know how you still function at the level you do.”

“When I try to have sex with him, any little noise triggers it. I’ve lost consciousness before.”

“And he was still fine when you came around,” John said, “Because the wolf isn’t wanting to hurt him. It wants to be close to him as much as you do and you aren’t letting it. When you ignore your wolf it’s going to come out when your guard is down.”

Chris continued to stare at the railing as different instances of sex with Peter slipped through his mind. The parasite was so persistent about taking him over he could hardly think.

“So even if I anchor on him, it’ll still interfere when we have sex,” Chris said.

“Once you start to realize he’s your companion instead of a disease, you aren’t going to think of it like that,” John said. “It’s just an extension of yourself being affectionate with your mate. When you start to accept him in your mind and make space for him, you’ll be able to coexist.”

“I can’t coexist with something that tried to kill me.”

He heard John sigh next to him, but didn’t look up.

“Chris, he was just being a wolf. On top of that, he was a Deadfall. A human is on their food chain. You can’t blame an animal for being an animal. You were bait and he was baited. There’s only one person to hold responsible for what happened to you and Claudia took care of him,” John said. “You’d never see a Deadfall wound its own pup to attract prey.”

He felt that hit somewhere in his brain that didn’t belong to him. Some place that rang true and sent a shiver up his spine.

“I saw what it did to you. I was right beside Claudia when she was trying to save you. There was only one monster in that clearing and we know who it was.”

Chris looked at his hands and the tattoos that covered his arms. He remembered being chained to the stake in the ground by his ankle and his father saying it was okay. It was a game. It had been cold and he hadn’t had a shirt. When his father nicked his collarbone with a pocket knife, he’d cried, but his father had told him he was doing great. Then Gerard had hidden. The clearing had been so quiet in the silver light of the full moon. He remembered calling for his dad and he hadn’t come as hours past.

He could barely remember the wolf. It was so large at first he’d thought it was just a boulder or a bear. He remembered screaming and that was all.

“It was just being a wolf, Chris,” John said again gently.

Then Chris realized the acidic scent that had been creeping into his senses was coming from his own skin. He put his head in his hand and focused on his breathing.

“I’ve never not blamed him,” Chris said.

“I don’t doubt you. I just need you to focus on the fact that for the wolf, it was never personal. He was acting on instinct alone. Your father… I don’t know, Chris. I don’t know why some people are allowed to exist. I never would’ve imagined that capacity for evil could live inside a human before that night. You were so small.”

The low scent of heat mixed with something uniquely sad in the air. He couldn’t begin to name the scents. The animal inside him just knew what they meant. When he looked up, John’s eyes were glassed.

“You went through too much to not be happy,” John said, finally looking at him. “Gerard did something incomprehensible. He took everything from you that a ten year old could give. Don’t let him keep striping you of things. You’re a werewolf. It might not have been what you wanted, but it happened and it wasn’t a death sentence. You’ve met werewolves. You know good ones. We love our packs. We love our families. Our wolves are viciously protective of them and sometimes they love them beyond what our human side is capable of. My wolf somehow loves Stiles even more than my logical mind is able to and I love that kid with everything I have. It loves him more. That’s his pup and he thinks he’s just the most amazing thing in the world. Not that I don’t think the same thing, but I don't know, it’s something in the blood.

“If you let go, your wolf is going to show you that’s how much it loves Peter.”

Chris swallowed and made his jaw relax as he took a deep uneven breath. “How would I do that?”

“You’ll need intense and extended contact with Peter in nature. The longer you spend on four legs the better. You have to learn how to start interacting with the wolf when he’s in control and you have to allow it to be with Peter.”

Chris exhaled slowly, rubbing his thighs and nodding.

“Most pairs go into the mountains for a few days. They spend time with the wolf, you get in touch with it, you start to trust its motivations, get familiar with its mind. And you let Peter start to do the same thing. It’s a full moon by choice, so you won’t lose consciousness. You’ll be aware of how it could kill him, but you have to trust that it won’t.”

Chris nodded after a moment, rubbing his legs again. “Then?”

“It’s different for everyone. I’ve anchored on two people, Claudia and Stiles. I went into the mountains with both of them and had completely different experiences. With Claudia it was like being in a dream. I was so dumbstruck and enamoured by her. Then with Stiles, it was right after she died and we were both messed up. We just wandered around without knowing what we were doing. One night we stayed in a cave while it rained and I just remember him holding onto my fur and crying like he hadn’t when I was human. The intense love and protection I felt for him at that moment was enough to put my anchor firmly on him. My heart was shredded to pieces, but I still had a reason to live. I could never leave him, never make him suffer alone. My wolf became as dedicated to that as it had been to being a good partner for Claudia.

“But a familial anchor is going to happen a little differently than if you take your husband for your anchor. Most couples solidify the bond through sex with their partner while they’re shifted. You’ll lose complete consciousness and you’ll have to make the choice to trust your wolf with Peter.”

“What if I do hurt him?”

“You’d know if it wanted to kill him by now. He’ll probably get scratched and have teeth marks, but that’s all superficial.”

Chris nodded again. He looked at his hands and they were shaking. Then he felt John’s hand on his shoulder. He startled slightly, but didn’t pull away. His eyes were burning. There was a horrifying moment of realizing he was going to cry before it started. He put his head in his hand and tried to push it back as it felt like everything he had achieved meant so little.

John’s hand stayed warm and steady on his shoulder as the impact of what had happened collapsed on him in a way he had never allowed himself to examine. He felt the wolf in his head press forward and didn’t have the will to keep it back. A warm firm pressure pressed against his pain that was near agony.

 

 

When Peter came into the house after dark, Coriolanus greeted him with all of his puppy happiness. Peter petted his heads before walking down the hall toward the stairs. He paused when he saw Chris in the living room. The TV was off and he was sitting on the couch, leaned forward, and staring at nothing.

“Chris,” he said.

Chris looked up, his eyes flashed gold before they were blue again. They were red-veined. He opened his mouth then closed it, his lips twisting before he looked down again. His face clenched before he put his head in his hands and his back started to shake.

Peter had fully intended to come home and ignore Chris until he felt like interacting again. That heaviness cracked off his shoulders like clay being hit with a pick. He sat on the ottoman in front of Chris and pulled him forward.

Chris held back and took Peter by his shoulders, pressing him toward the ground. Peter resisted for a moment, looking at Chris’s tear-stained face before he let himself be guided to the floor. Chris slipped off the couch and straddled his hips. He leaned down and kissed the side of Peter’s throat. Peter closed his eyes and felt Chris’s flat teeth then his canines. Peter slid his hand up Chris’s back and the other into his hair, tilting up his chin. Chris’s tongue dragged over the tender skin he caused.

He moaned softly when Chris bit then kissed on a place that caused a small jolt of pain. He stilled, but Chris didn’t pull away. A low growl vibrated against Peter’s chest as Chris kept marking the side of his throat.

Then Chris leaned back enough to look in his face. His eyes were gold before they shifted to blue and tears brimmed over again as his body tensed then shook as a sob worked through him. Chris looked up, like he couldn’t keep eye contact. Peter sat up, making Chris shift back on his legs so Peter could hold him with the couch against his back. Chris clutched him and Peter held him just as tightly.

A fresh hard sob ripped through Chris. Peter felt his tears against the side of his neck. Fear was starting to creep up his spine. He could count how many times he had seen Chris cry. He had never seen him cry this hard.

“What’s wrong?” he asked softly, trying to keep the anxiety out of his voice. It didn’t work.

Chris mumbled, but Peter couldn’t hear him with it muffled against his skin. He gently pulled Chris away and Chris leaned back. His face was covered in wetness. Peter pulled off his shirt and gave it to him. Chris wiped his face with it. His nails were black. When he lowered the shirt, his face was still creased and tears were still gathering in his eyes.

“It doesn’t want to hurt you,” Chris said.

“I know it doesn’t,” Peter said, taking Chris’s face in his hands.

“I didn’t believe you.”

That hurt, but Peter leaned forward to kiss Chris. His lips were soft and loose against his own, giving the kind of kisses that were far too rare between them. Peter wanted to push, be as close to Chris as they could be, but he made himself stop and only touch forehead against Chris’s.

“You’ve always been my puppy,” Peter said, smiling slightly.

Instead of growling or arguing like he almost always did, Chris just pressed his face against Peter’s neck again. Peter pressed his cheek against Chris’s and rubbed his back and neck slowly until Chris’s weight made his legs go numb.

 

When they made it upstairs to their room, Chris’s skin radiating warmth against his own. Peter kissed lightly over Chris’s shoulder where he faced him. Chris made a low noise as he did it, up his neck and to his jaw. Chris’s fingers traced over his back in slow soft patterns with his nails.

“I love you,” Peter said against his skin.

“I love you too,” Chris said.

Peter kissed his forehead before he laid back down, touching Chris’s face. When Chris opened his eyes, they were gold again. They had shifted multiple times over the night. Peter swept beneath his lashes, feeling nearly hypnotised.

“We have to go into the woods for a few days,” Chris said. “John said that’s how we’d make the anchor work. I have to be shifted and we have to spend time together in nature.”

“No it can’t just be easy, not in the house with heating,” Peter said, smiling faintly.

Chris snorted and Peter kissed his cheek again. Chris moved forward, brushing his rough cheek against his neck. Peter held him closer, inhaling the scent of his hair.

“When do you want to go?”

“As soon as we can,” Chris said.

Peter nodded against him. “I’m going to take Coriolanus to stay with Stiles. He’s too much for Mom and Talia.”

“Okay,” Chris said.

“I’ll go in the morning. We could leave tomorrow afternoon.”

“Okay,” Chris said again.

Peter squeezed him and Chris squeezed him back. Behind Chris, he could see Coriolanus sleeping against his legs. He felt Chris breath deeply against him as he fell asleep. Peter pressed slightly closer until as much of their skin touched as possible.

 

 

The next morning, Peter and Chris were both awake before dawn. Chris was going around the house, gathering supplies for a pack Peter could carry and Peter got Coriolanus ready to go to Stiles’s. When he had his bowls, food, and treats together, Peter kissed Chris in the kitchen. Chris put the energy bars he’d been taking out of the box down and turned into him, kissing him deeply. A tingle wound up Peter’s spine like it always did when Chris gave in.

“I’ll be back in a little while,” Peter said.

“Okay,” Chris said. Then he kneeled down and kissed Coriolanus on his middle head. The dog licked him from every direction. “We’ll come get you as soon as we get back,” he said, like the dog could actually understand.

Peter clipped on Coriolanus’s leash and went out to the SUV. Coriolanus sat in the passenger seat, staring out of the windows as they went toward the Haven. He didn’t get excited until Peter pulled up in front of the shop as pale rays of muted sunlight spilled into the clearing.

Peter unclipped his leash before getting out of the truck and went to the other side to let him out. Coriolanus ran up the path to the front door, barking and wagging his tail. One of his heads looked back at Peter, waiting for him to open the door. Then it opened away and Stiles stood on the other side in a worn t-shirt and thin sleep pants.

“Man, you’ve gotta stop with the early morning shit,” Stiles said, but smiled slightly as he scratched Coriolanus behind the ears.

“Sorry, but thanks to you and your dad, I have to go on a camping trip,” Peter said.

“Really?” Stiles asked, obviously knowing what he meant.

Peter smiled slightly. “We’ll see how it goes. I’m trying to not get my hopes up.”

“It’ll go well,” Stiles said, straightening from petting Coriolanus. “You guys have known each other so long, it’s going to be easy.”

“I don’t know. Nothing has been that easy with us.”

“Then maybe it's time you guys get a break,” Stiles said.

“I hope so,” Peter said. “Do you mind watching him?”

“Of course not,” Stiles said, smiling down at the dog sitting on his feet. “We’ll hang out. He’ll guard the shop for me like a good boy.”

“Oh yeah, he’s a killer.”

Stiles laughed slightly as he walked back into the shop. “Let me give you some things for the trip.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

Peter rolled his eyes, but followed Stiles inside, closing the door. Stiles moved around the shop, taking things from the shelves. Peter leaned against his desk and watched him. How he knew where everything was among the assortment of odd things, Peter didn’t know, but it was fascinating to watch. It must be interbred into what he was, the allure of fascination, that made every mundane thing he did seem enchanting.

After making a round of the shop, Stiles came back to the counter and laid some things on it, standing in front of Peter. He put a cloth sack on the counter and folded it down.

“Here are some healing salves,” Stiles said, taking a few small packages. “They’re potent. If you cut yourself, deep or shallow, these should take care of it. Animal bites too. This is a heating bag,” he said, holding a cloth bag. “Put it in your sleeping bag and you’ll stay warm. Even with Chris there it’s probably going to be chilly for you. Then these are fire starters,” he said, picking up a small jar of purple salts. “Sprinkle them on the wood, hit it with some water and there you go. Keep the jar in this bag. You don’t want it to get wet, obviously.” He picked up another jar of white salt and put it in the bag. “For purifying water.” Then he put a jar of clear gel in the bag. “And lube.”

“Lube,” Peter deadpanned.

“Taking a werewolf knot isn’t really comfortable. This has some numbing agents in it and it’ll heal any tears pretty quickly.”

Peter stared at it until he looked back at Stiles. Stiles smiled slightly.

“You didn’t think becoming spiritually and emotionally close wasn’t going to involve sex?”

“I didn’t think about it honestly,” Peter said.

“It feels good. Just getting the knot in can sting. After he’s in you’ll love it.”

“How are you so sure?” Peter asked.

“Because you’re easy for him,” Stiles said.

“Whatever,” Peter said.

Then Stiles took the last thing from the counter, a small marble.

“This will make your pack lighter,” he said.

“Thank you,” Peter said.

“No problem,” Stiles said.

Peter watched him tighten the top of the sack. In the dimness of the shop, his eyes were as dark as his moles and hair. When Stiles finished, he looked at Peter for a moment before he held out his arms. Peter hugged him, then tightened his arms.

“Thank you,” Peter said.

“I just want both of you to be happy,” Stiles said, still holding on to him.

Peter clenched his eyes and squeezed him. The gods must have more favor for either him or Chris than he realized. It could have been so easy to have never met Stiles, for him to have never cared to fix what was unbalanced in Peter and Chris’s relationship, but no. Instead, their path in life had converged and he was profoundly grateful.

When he pulled away, Peter kissed Stiles on the corner of his mouth, holding his cheek.

“We’ll come get him as soon as we get back,” he said.

“Take your time. I’ll take good care of him,” Stiles said, squeezing his hand.

Peter gave him a slight smile and picked up the bag, going toward the door. As the screen clacked behind him, Peter could barely feel the weight of the bag in his hand.

 

The sun was barely coming from behind the clouds as Peter walked to the treeline of their backyard with Chris. Chris sat down and took off his boots. Peter sat down beside him, unlacing the other. After Chris got them off, he stood up and pushed down his jeans and pulled off his t-shirt. He helped Peter fold them and load them into the pack, tying his boots to a loop in case he needed to shift when they were in the woods. With the marble Stiles had given him, the pack still felt light as Peter tested its weight.

Then Peter sat it to the side and turned into Chris beside him, tugging him into a kiss. Chris kissed him back, touching his face and neck.

“If I do anything to you-.”

“You won’t,” Peter said quietly. “Don’t even think like that.”

Chris closed his eyes and nodded, pressing his forehead to Peter’s.

“I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” Peter said.

They kissed again before Chris pulled away. His brow creased and he clenched his fists before the tattoos and scars covering his body started to move. It looked like it hurt, but Chris didn’t make a noise as his skin distended and deformed for a handful of time before his wolf was in front of Peter. It pushed off the ground and shook out its fur before licking Peter’s face with its tail wagging.

Peter laughed slightly, taking the wolf’s head in his hands and kissing between his eyes.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

The wolf sneezed, almost prancing backward before it ran into the woods. Peter laughed, pulling on the backpack and following it.


End file.
